Adele
by ikl wings
Summary: What is to happen to a young woman who taller than the average lady? A maid told her 'Killing! You’ll kill more men than this one. You won’t kill him; he's too strong but others! So much love to burn a man to ashes'. Tala . THIS IS ACTUALLY COMPLETED
1. Prologue

**Adele is a really nice name and so I thought about a story kinda set in the days of kings and queens like the times of Marie Antoinette and the French revolution**

**Hope you likey :) **

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Prologue**

Late September, the realm of Aenslad. The Gothard Pass. The winds screaming down from the high mountain peaks as though winter had already come, flinging the early snow against the shutters of the inn; now snow, now sleet, was billowing smoke of the log fire in the bedroom, among the curtains of the bed, choking the couple who lay there.

"This is a damnable inn," said Mr Baltimore. "And a damnable country, and a damnable journey. I hope you are pleased, Fiora. Travelling is all very well for a young fellow who must make his way, and look at ruins, but for us! At our age! I am bout forty, and you are as near to it that it makes no difference, and here we are scampering across the realms of Talmond, Mixera, Fargira, and Aenslad like a pair of lunatics."

"Hardly scampering," Mrs Baltimore said with a tired peevishness. "We have been fastened here for four days in what you rightly call this damnable inn. It seems like four months. And if you had for once in our lives consented to listen to me we should by now be in Nalalia and looking forward to a winter of sunshine, and good society.

"Nalalia!" cried Mr Baltimore. "Thieves and beggars! Stenches and dirt and not knowing when one would be stabbed in the street. Was Royton not bad enough for you!"

"I was happy there for the first time in my married life. And if ­­­­­­­­­---" Mrs Baltimore began. A scream from the room next door cut her short. A high lifting, agonised scream that competed with the wind outside, rose above it, seemed to break like shattered glass, and died away into long shudders of pain.

"It had begun," said Mrs Baltimore. "Poor wretched creature."

"Upon my soul," said Mr Baltimore, "What a country, what people? In a public inn at---" He pressed the catch of his little clock and the tiny chimes rang three times, and then gave five sharp little sounds in quick succession. "At five past three in the morning!"

"A woman in labour does not take much account of the time." Mrs Baltimore said.

The scream came again, and Mrs Baltimore put the pillow over her ears. "Go to sleep for heaven's sake."

"Sleep!! What can her people have been thinking of? To send her off like a - like a delivery parcel! At such a time! Could they not count? Do these people not even know that a child comes after nine months, and one should not go lurching about the realms in coaches or - what can her husband be thinking of? Is he a madman?"

"If she has a husband. Go to sleep, you are freezing the bed sitting up like that."

"But there could be no hope of sleep. The screams rang out again and again, hour after hour, until near morning they came swifter, nearer and together. A coming and going in the corridor, heavy feet of servants carrying firewood, buckets of hot water. The midwife, the girl's own servants talking outside the door. A man and a woman. She had arrived in her own coach, her servants travelling with her. A tall, very tall young heavily pregnant noblewoman was trying to conceal it with her cloak. Needing to be helped up the stairs, a whispering and hurrying among the inn people as if they guessed the traveller to be of more that usual consequence. Although she was spoken of as plain 'Madame'.

For three days she had kept to her room, her meals brought up to her, and mostly, Mrs Baltimore had noticed that they were brought down untasted and untouched. Always one of her own servants outside her door, as though she was being guarded from intrusion, although who in heaven's name would wish to intrude her? And now she was giving birth. Mr Baltimore got up and paced the floor in his rage. Not a wink of sleep. Not a sign of the weather breaking. They might be trapped here all winter. All winter! All the hunting season! All the shooting! Trapped in this sink hole with a young woman and a baby and not a human being who spoke Talmish. Except Fiora. And after such a night he was not much inclined to class her among human beings. They should have brought their own servants, although he would have died rather than admit it to Mrs Baltimore.

At least he could have talked to his valet about something.

"Why did we come?" he said. "Why did I let you persuade me? I am an imbecile, I deserve it, I am a weak fool, and a hen pecked lubber lumpkin. Pictures! Statues! Churches! I never say so much trumpery in all my life!"

"Harrison, you have woken me again."

The screams next door had died down, faded, become a gasping for breath, an exhausted sobbing.

"She has finally given birth," Mrs Baltimore said a shadow of bitterness in her voice. She herself had give birth three times, and lost each child within hours. "Now will you come back to bed?" It is over and finished, and if heaven is merciful she will make no more noise."

There was the sound of slapping, and the child began to cry.

"This is intolerable!" Mr Baltimore shouted, "I shall go out of my mind. Is this place an inn or a lying in hospital? When shall we get out of here?" He went to the window and flung open the shutters. Snow fell into the room in a great heap from somewhere, and the wind followed it, tearing at the curtains, the window, Mr Baltimore's nightshirt and nightcap. An ugly, leaden twilight, neither day nor night. Nothing visible, not mountains, or rocks, or road. Mrs Baltimore hid herself under the covers, shrieking.

"I shall die of pneumonia and it will be your fault," Mr Baltimore said, kicking the snow out of the way with his bare feet and trying to refasten the shutters. They slammed out of his hand against the outer wall, and he had to content himself with closing the window with its panes of wood and skins. Not glass! What type of a place is this? What a damnable inn, a rotten sink hole!

It was another four days before the weather changed. Waking to daylight, sunshine, the wind dropped, a snowy landscape, snow peaks glittering, black rocks, patches of grass between the dazzling snowdrifts that were already melting, sparkling like heaps of diamonds.

A bustling of servants, of horses, the young noblewoman's coach being brought round, and the horses put to it. Trunks loaded behind. Mr Baltimore watching through the dinning room window, if one could call such an ill favoured, smoke ridden, bacon smelling hole a dinning room. What were they doing? They could not mean to travel with her in this state? After scarcely four days? But they not only meant it, they were doing it. Her coachman, her postilion already mounted. Her two servants coming out of the inn supporting her. Muffled to the eyes, so that there was almost nothing to see but her tall figure, leaning on her manservant's shoulder, her fur lined bonnet, her long fur cloak.

She seemed so weak that they needed to lift her into the coach. Climbed in after. And the child? Where is the child? The coachman snapping his whip, slapping the long reins on the rumps of his four horses, the coach swaying. And from inside it another scream, "Mon enfant! Ma fille! The coach swayed wildly, the young woman at the coach window, trying to open the door, beating at the glass, her face uncovered now, white, shocked and ill, her mouth opened as she screamed again, "Ma fille, donnez moi ma fille!"

The servants were pulling her back between them, her face vanishing. The coach climbing the roads towards the pass, towards Fargira, her screams still ringing and then cut off, as if they were being stifled. Mr Baltimore stood at the window with his mouth open, shocked into momentary paralysis. What - what had they-? He began to run out of the room, and crashed with his courier, almost knocking him down.

"Joseph! They have gone off without that woman's child, what are they about? After them, stop them!"

The courier held onto him, half to save himself from falling, half to hold his employer back from a useless action.

"Signore, please be calm! Be calm Signore. There are many complications there. Better not to notice happenings that don't concern you sir."

"Not notice? When I've been kept awake four nights on end! And now they go off and leave - what complications?"

"Calm down Signore, please. Many many complications. A young lady from a great family and she has no husband, means much disgrace, so they send her away to Fargira and her time is coming on her here in the inn to soon, do you understand. Leave alone, sir, is a much better idea, always better and the quiet life."

"Let go of my arm, damn you"

But the coach was almost out of sight, was out of sight beyond rocks, a bend in the villainous track that the people of Aenslad had the impotence to call a road.

Mr Baltimore ran round to the back of the inn, thinking of getting a horse, of riding after the monsters. And met the midwife carrying a swaddled bundle that made mewling cries as she held it under her arm like a parcel. Hurrying, looking away from Mr Baltimore, as though the darkness and back stairs were he proper setting, and sunlight and the open air affected her uncomfortably.

"What are you doing?" Mr Baltimore shouted, "Is that the child?" He made to take it; the woman was holding it in such an unwomanly fashion. The old crone begun to run, like a crab, scuttling. Mr Baltimore seized hold of her, shouting, "Fiora, Joseph, someone! Come here, this devilish old hag is going to murder the child." He had no doubt of it as he said it although the suspicion had only entered his mind that second, as the woman began to run. She shook and trembled in his grasp, whistling through her blackened stumps of teeth, jabbering her incomprehensible language.

"Be quiet, you wicked wretch! Give me the child!"

She could not have understood the words, but slowly she relaxed her grasp as Mr Baltimore took hod of it. The innkeeper's wife came running, the innkeeper himself, bowlegged and squinting. The courier, his wife and the inn servants also came out.

"She was taking the child off with her; she was going to murder it!"

"Signore, vi prego! Lascia stare!"

A babble of dialect, Mr Baltimore holding his prize cradled in his arms, still mewling like a kitten. He uncovered the tiny creature's face. A red crumple of skin, a kind of sky blue wisps as soft as clouds on its head and eyes as green as the new leaves in spring. A little kitten mouth opening to shriek, tiny fists freeing themselves from the swaddle, lifting towards Mr Baltimore's face.

"Signore, I beg you give it back to the old woman. Already they are killing the father, shooting him dead as soon as they discover it. Give it back Signore, forget everything to do with those people."

"You ruffian! Fiora, Fiora! Take it, we shall -" He was going to say, "We shall find someone to after it." But just as he had known that the old crone meant to do away with the child, he knew now that he himself meant to keep it, which nothing on earth would get it away from him. They had lost three, and he had wept for them more that Fiora had done. And here was a fourth, put into his arms like an act of heaven. "Take her, Fiora quickly!"

"I have no intention of toughing it," Mrs Baltimore said. "If you insist on making an exhibition of yourself-" Turning to go into the inn again. To stop as if she had been struck. "And if you are thinking-" she cried, clasping her hands together, "If you are so much as imagining that we- that I- " And as she saw her husband's expression, "Harrison! I forbid you! I will not countenance it! Are you barking mad?"

But all her protests were useless, as the outcries of the midwife; of the people in the inn; of Kevin predicting vengeance and death from the nameless 'great family' that had so wisely and honourably condemned this child to a swift return to heaven. "E una bastarda, signore, una nienta. C'e l'onore di sangue, di famiglia! O Signore milor, I beg and pray of you leave her be to these good people."

"Nothing served. By the expenditure of as much good gold as might brought by Mrs Baltimore's maid and Mr Baltimore's valet with them for the entire journey, instead of hiring the damnable people of Aenslad who didn't know how to attend to their hair or brush a coat. The journey was more or less arranged; a wet nurse found, and the long journey towards Aserythe with a small additional passenger sucking contently at a great naked breast, as the carriage swayed and bumped and shuddered down the mountainside.

"I shall name her Adele," Mr Baltimore said, "And I trust that you will never try to persuade me to set my foot outside of our home again so long as I live. Adele? Adele? See she knows me already, the rogue."

The wet nurse changed the baby from one enormous breast to the other. Mrs Baltimore closed her eyes.

"Its a pity of course that she is not a boy," Mr Baltimore said. "But I shall teach her to ride, and she can come hunting with me. There is good bone there. Adele? Adele? Look! She is laughing the villain. You hear her? She is glad to be coming with us to Talmond."

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**well people this is kinda something I was working on since I had nothing else to do while on holidays which were kind boring since we have lots of rain. Which means lots of days inside oww.**

**Read and review**

**Bye and smiles**

**ikl wings**


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 of the story**

**Hope you likey**

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Chapter 1**

The noise was savage, overwhelming. It filled the darkness with a bronze throated roaring, a deep, continuing clamouring of bells. The night shook with it; the balcony under her feet vibrated, the tall, open windows beside her, the thick walls of the house, as if they were trying to ring in answer. Wave on wave of sound like a storm. A dozen of individual voices in the uproar and then one peal lifting high above the others for a moment, a high wilderness of ringing; now one, now another and another; far away, near to, across the river, and again almost beside her so that the rooftops shivered. Every church in Ishe sounding the alarm, gone mad with warning. Out to the distant hills and back again. Wild, deafening, making her blood sing with excitement of it, as if the heart of Ishe was singing the wildness of the Revolution. And under the clamour of the bells and drumming. Deep and throbbing, beating the assembly, drumming, drumming, drumming like blood, thick and dense. Far away, but calling, calling _'Come, come, march with us! Ca ira ca ira! Beat of blood.'_

She felt dizzy with the storm and throbbing of the noise, and had to grip the edge of the balcony to keep herself steady. Leaning over it, leaning in the dark, into the waves of sounds as if they could support her by themselves, like the force of gale. Shadows hurried in the street below, along the dark, narrow channel of the chateau. A man keeping close to the wall beneath her balcony, his head bent as if he was afraid of being recognised. The glisten of steel, two soldiers, the ring of nailed boots in an instant of almost silence, and then the bells drowning out their footsteps, seeming to drive them on like shadows on the wind.

"Messieurs! What's happening, what is it?"

But they did not hear her, or did not bother to answer woman's stupid question in such a time. Lights in the house opposite, candles, lamps lit, behind the dark curtains. The silhouettes of people moving, as if they were hurriedly dressing, against what ever the emergency. War? Invasion? She leaned out further still and looked towards Loretta's balcony. Surely she must be also awake. Even she could not have slept through this? But her window was dark and shuttered. Was she too frightened to open it?

Adele went back into her room and knocked at the connecting door. "Loretta? Are you awake? Lifting her candlestick to see better. How could anyone sleep in this atmosphere? She could feel the sweat start on her. "Loretta!"

Her cousin's eyes opening with heavy sleep, then widening, alarmed. "What is that noise? The bells?"

"That is what I mean to find out. I'm going to call Papa. I came in to see whether you were alright?"

Loretta reached out to her, gripped her wrist. "Don't go! What is it? Where is Ester? Ester! Are they going to kill us?"

"Don't be silly. No one is going to hurt you. It is only an invasion, the war has begun, something like that. I'm going down to the street to ask someone."

"No! Adele are you mad?" Lifting herself from her nest of goose feathered cushions and pink, blue and ivory satin, her hair falling like spilled honey on her shoulders; the scents of warmth, sleep and her luxurious bed. She was blessed or cursed with the soft youngness and cream white flesh and womanhood seeming to pulse out of her, so that Adele wanted to shake her, her own puritanism, her own almost masculinity revolted but her, as if she herself was a young man looking at a temptress. She had to run quickly away; pull the curtains open, and the shutters, and the tall imported windows that opened like doors onto the balcony. The noise of the bells that had been muffled and yet loud enough came flooding in like thunder, and Loretta gave a small scream of terror, burying herself among the cushions and the silk sheets and the eiderdown. "Ester! Adele, for pity's sake! What is it? Are they down below?"

"It must be the Mixerians. Do you hear the drums? They're calling the army to defend Ishe! Ca ira ca ira! That is what they sing! Can you hear it?"

"Ester!"

From the other door appeared a slim oriental young lady with long black hair, her eyes dark blue, pulling the belt of her nightgown round her waist, knotting it. Kneeling down by her mistress, putting her arm around her. "Ma cocotte! Little sweet one, don't be afraid, Lalitte is here, Ester is here, I'll look after you."

"Make her shut the windows. Make her."

"Madame, please Madame Adele. Madame Adele please my mistress is frightened." Gently but firmly she took the handles of the windows from her mistress' cousin and pushed the two casements shut. Then the shutters and curtains, until by comparison there was almost quietness. The storm shut out. Loretta was crying, allowing the tears to fall like crystal drops. Ester dried them with her fingertips, whispered in Creole so that what she said was incomprehensible to Adele. Her fingertips golden against the white velvet of Loretta's skin, the honey gold of her hair, smoothing, comforting, cosseting; a head with its long silk strands like delicate vines, which were almost hidden under a red silk cap, red satin nightgown tied at the waist. As if the two of them were making a picture deliberately, white, gold and yellow scarlet. And the scent, and the stifling heat of the room, like a blood beat of sensuality; and the cushions, and the curtains, white muslin and dark velvet; and the clothes scattered and heaped and piled on the chairs, sofas, and even the end of Loretta's bed. Silk chemises, satin gowns, scarves, ribbons, sticking, bodices, all heaped and thrown where the two of them must have spent ours the night before they went to bed trying on new clothes in front of the cheval glass.

I could strike them both, Adele thought, and wanted to catch hold of Ester and pull her upright and make her do something, even though there was nothing to so. And at least she was keeping her mistress quiet.

"I'm going to call Papa," she said. "And then I shall go and find out some news."

But her father was already awake, and half dressed, trying to put on his boots, this thin grey hair and his shirt was still unbuttoned. Adele instantly looked away so that her father could finish buttoning the rest of his shirt.

"What a damnable uproar. Can they do nothing quietly? What is it Adele, What are they on about now?"

"I don't know Papa. I'm going down to find someone to ask. Do you ear the drums? I think it must be an invasion. What a sight you're, I'd best brush your hair before you let anyone see you."

But she could not wait to do it and was at the door again before her father called after her, "You are in your nightgown, child! What would your mother say? Put something on."

But it was not a time for thinking about clothes. She ran through the anteroom that served them for a hall and opened the doors to the first floor where Madame de Martinique lived in a welter of cats and clocks and the remembrances of her husband, the general. There was not a sign of life from her or her servant, not a glimmer of light. Down the main stairs to the entrance hall. She had the chain unfastened and the bolts drawn back before she heard the knocking.

The man's hand was still raised to knock again as she swung back one of the heavy leaves of the great wooden doors. The shadow shape of a tall man in a riding cloak which had a hood, Adele could see just a few strands of blood red hair coming out at odd angles under the hood. A tall, taller than herself, his fist still raised as though he was about to strike her. She stepped back by instinct, and caught her breath.

"Do not be frightened, Madame. I have a message for his house, for someone here. May I come inside?"

"I'm not frightened. Who is your message for?" And then as he came in still hesitating, perhaps in the natural fear of frightening a woman at such a time of night, or morning, and such a morning it was. She said, "What is happening? Why are they ringing the bells? And the drums? Is it war? Have the Mixerians invaded?

"No Madame. It is the people. Have you any light?" He had closed the door behind them and they were in total darkness of the hall. He was no longer even a shadow. The bells themselves muffled again by the closed door. Growing quieter still for a few moments as the nearest churches stopped for breath or exhaustion, the sounds now coming from afar. The surging nearer and nearer, filling the street outside, beating against the doors.

"What do you mean? The people?" At such an extra ordinary time it seemed quite ordinary to talk to a stranger in the dark of the hall in her nightgown.

"They're marching against the King, Madame. They're tired of him, even of a King who does nothing." He sounded as though he was grinding the words between his teeth. But whether his position was with the people or the King it was impossible to tell.

"But I'm pressed for time," he said. "Otherwise I should not have-and I saw your light. Are you Madame Baltimore perhaps?"

"I'm Miss Baltimore. How do you know my name? And who is your message for? Who sent you?"

"If your father is above, may we go up to him and I shall answer everything." He took her arm without waiting for her agreement and began to guide her up the broad stairs as if he could see in the dark. He had begun to speak in Talmish as soon as she had told him who she was. Not at all a commoner's stumbling and mangled Talmish, and yet not a citizen of Talmond. A strange accent that she recognised but couldn't put her finger on it.

"Who are you?"

"Wait Madame." Hurrying her is grasping of her arm more powerful than polite. She tried to free herself but he held her without effort, without seeming aware that she wanted him to let go of her. On the landing above her father was waiting with a lit candle, his hair still on end, none of his clothes laced or buttoned as though should be, one of his boots in his other hand, the candlestick raised up.

"Adele? Adele? Is that you child? Fetch that damned rogue of a valet down to me. He cant be asleep in all this racket, devil take him. Kevin! And get your girl up to make us tea. What? Who's that? What in blazes? Who the devil is this fellow?"

"Inside if you please. Mr Baltimore? I have a message for you. From the Count Dominic de Martinique, two in fact." He brought both of them inside the apartment, closing the doors again behind him. He took out a folded and sealed paper from inside his cloak. Indoors he seemed even taller. A man of thirst or so a pale lean face carved out by candlelight in strong shadows of cheekbone, nose and jaw. He looked at Adele and bowed. Not an elegant, court bow of this who still used it, nor a servant's bow, but a stiff bob of the head as if it was a waste of time to be got over quickly.

"You had questions for me? Who I am doesn't matter. I'm just a simple messenger, nothing else. I know your name from the Count." He did not say _'the Count, my master.'_

"As for the bells and drums, I told you the people are marching. They are tired of having a King."

There was something, in fact a great deal, about his manner that she did not like. Her father had turned away to a table in the small anteroom to read his letter and Adele became conscious of her nightgown, and the man's eyed looking her up and down.

"You called me Madame, not citizeness. You're not in favour of the people of Aserythe? She said.

He didn't take it as an insult, or a challenge, or even look surprised at such a remark from a foreigner. Instead, and to her surprise, he seemed to take the question seriously. He was stripping off his long riding gauntlets. His hands were slightly tanned like his face but it still was quite pale. He gripped his long jaw between a thumb and forefinger rasping at the night's stubble of beard there. "Not of these people," He said at last.

Mr Baltimore turned round, waving the letter in his fist. "Impossible! Nonsense! Forgive me sir but I have not yet thanked you. Thank you, Thank you but this is utter foolishness - Adele, the Count says in this that we are to return to Talmond! Good grief man, we just got here! Did he so much as read the letters that I've business, my niece's business, her inheritance, estates. I must see to them for her, in times like these more urgently than ever. Go back to Talmond? And without delay, he says! Does he think that I'm a madman to come all this way, leaving my home, wife and my niece's parents and put up with all we have gone through these last past weeks just to go home again? _'Without delay.' Is he mad?"_

He had taken the messenger's arm in his hysteria. The man detached Mr Baltimore's hand as if he was dealing with a child.

"If you'll listen to me, sir. I have not much time to spare. I'm to add to the letter .If you could leave Ishe today, so much the better. Tomorrow may be too late. The Count wrote that more than a week ago. I've been delayed in reaching you and every day that has gone strengthens the arguments for your leaving."

"I've no intention--"

"Sir, you may do as you wish, but you must first listen. You have your daughter and your niece with you. Things may soon happen here, very soon happen, that will put every family like you're in danger."

"Preposterous! Who the blazes are you or that damned old ninny of a Count to tell me what I must do? Where the devil is my fellow? Adele, fetch him down, the rascal, and that girl of yours. The deuce knows what they are at, you had best not go yourself, and I will go. No send up Loretta's creature, let her frighten them. What was I saying?" He begun to brush his hair with the letter, making an odd crackling sound against the background thundering and pealing that had grown so constant that Adele had almost put it from her mind. Then... silence. The rasp and rattle of the stiff folds of paper in Mr Baltimore's plump white hand. A clock ticking. All three of them listening, holding themselves still, a hush of quietness.

"You see?" Mr Baltimore said, "They've stopped it at last. After waking the entire city and ruining my sleep, they've stopped. Like this whole rubbish revolution. I tell you sir, you haven't told me your name, but if you're the Count's messenger I assume that you share his feelings. I don't like any of it, its nonsense. I came here full of sympathy, I believe in Liberty, in Constitutions. Privilege is a damnable immoral thing, I was prepared to see good here, to find you all talking fine, sensible roads towards the sort of government we have in Talmond. But this, ringing bells, running out to the streets, shouting at your king, invading the palace and demolishing everything in the way is monstrous. By heaven sir they'll go nowhere like that, and you let them, the filth! If I had your king's ear for five minutes I'd tell him what he should do."

"Let me shake your and on that," the messenger said, his voice and expression calm.

"There are a great many of us who share your feelings exactly but the answer is simple that you think. There is going to be a deal of blood spilled before there is another king. It is all likely to begin today, that is why you should go home without delay. Is there a window we can go to for a moment?"

They went into Mr Baltimore's room and stood side by side on the balcony. Dawn had com turning the sky a blood red and at first they could only hear the silence. Like emptiness, as if the sky and city had been emptied and drained by a storm. Within the quietness, sounds beginning to make themselves heard, to fill the immensity of silence was a murmuring indistinct formless like the sea.

"They have begun," the stranger said. "They're marching against the King"

Adele leaned out above the street as she had done an hour ago listening. She imagined she could hear the rhythm of their marching and drums. Ca ira Ca ira. It began to beat within the rhythm of her heart beat, pulse with her blood.

"I think it is wonderful," she said, "A whole crowd marching united against tyranny; God grant they win!" she looked sideways to see how the stranger would answer her but he was gone. After a moment the door opened and shut below her and she saw his tall shadow striding away down the dark channel of the building.

"Such damned nonsense," her father said, and she couldn't tell for a moment whether he was referring to her opinions or the messenger's. "Marching against their King indeed! Even this poor fellow wont sand for that twice. I think we should take a stroll across to see this palace. We'll go after breakfast and see what happens when these wretches come up against the elite guard and see a few drawn weapons. I'll wager you that they'll march pretty fast in the opposite direction. Have seen my valet? My tea? Kevin damn you, are you there, bring my razors. Ha telling us to go home without delay! Did you ever hear such rubbish? That fellow must be an imbecile."

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Even now at half past six in the morning the crowds in the street across the city, into the garden of the Taleries (name of palace). All making their way in the same direction towards the palace. Poor people for the most part workmen, tradesmen from their shops, butchers with bloody aprons wielding cleavers, market women with baskets, some of them with red bonnets. Shop boys and apprentices, women in bright rags with painted cheeks and haggard mouths were also amongst the crowd.

It wasn't a pleasant crowd to be amongst and she needed all her energy of mind to tell her that she was glad to be jostled by them, and stared at in that brutally offensive way they all had of looking at a stranger.

"I'm with you!" She wanted to cry out to them. "In my heart!"

They knew no better, they were scarcely a year freed from slavery, from the brute beast oppression, and how should they have manners and know any better to behave like gentlemen and ladies of Talmond. Heaven knew that a Menos crowd was almost as bad, worse even more violent, more unpredictable, and more drunken and without a glimmer of an ideal of freedom to excuse hits violence.

"We've come as your friends?" she wanted to cry to a woman in a sacking apron with hell in her face and a knotted club sloped across her shoulder like a soldier's musket. "Stare as much as you were doing citizeness. That is your freedom; you have won the right to stare."

But the woman stank like a drain and Adele had to cling to her father's arm to prevent him fending her away from them with his cane. "Ca ira! Liberty!" The woman spat, measuring Adele with her eyes, her tallness, her cleanliness, the gloss of her air under her hat brim; as if all those things were an insult. They measured Mr Baltimore from the high waves of the grey hair to the shine on his boots, his gold chains and satin waistcoat.

"How they stink!" Mr Baltimore said in his customary loud voice, making no concessions to Aserythe or the Aserythian language. "Get away from us you rascal, how dare you push in front of me like that?" He lifted hi cane in threat against a carpenter with sawdust in his fair hair. Astonishing enough the man did back away from them and lost himself in the crowd among the trees.

"Papa! They can't help the way they smell and you'll get us in trouble if you-"

"Trouble? What trouble? I shall need to change my shirt when we get back. I'm filthy with them as it is, get away from me Madame, haven't you seen a gentleman before. What am I saying, of course not?"

"Papa, papa be quiet! Someone may understand us. You wanted to come out and here we are. You even wanted to come the long way around didn't you and I'm so glad. I wouldn't miss this for anything in the world."

"The devil take them soap is cheap enough. Where is Loretta and that girl of hers? If these creatures want to stare let them stare at her."

Adele turned and looked; even in that crowd and they had fallen far behind she could see them at once. Loretta's honey gold hair shone like the sun, with ribbons. Their heads bobbed up and down in the wave of people and Adele caught sight easily.

"Oh heaven's sake. Papa! They're miles behind us. I must go back. Why on earth did we bring her? Certainly she didn't want to come, not even get up on her own. Only the fear of Mr Baltimore and being lifted almost bodily out of bed by Adele had made her do it.

"She'll be terrified!" Adele said, and began cleaving her way back against the crowd like a powerful swimmer against a strong tide.

"Let me by, let me by please." She towered above most of them by a head or more and swept the last barrier of ragged starers surrounding her cousin and Ester. Don't cry, there's nothing to be scared of but I told you not to dress like this. No wonder why they are staring at you." Blue silk and chiffon, like she was going to meet with the royal court or have her portrait painted and Ester was as bad, in a scarlet redingote.

"She sets me off," Loretta said, as though it suited the occasion, "Do you want her to go naked just because her background is not like ours? Am I a monster that I should dress her properly?"

"Come on! Papa will be furious with you, we shall miss everything."

"I want to miss it. I want to go home, please Adele, and please take me back to the house. Let me lie down, I feel faint."

"You don't, how can you not be excited? Such a day, listen to the crowd outside the palace, listen to their chanting!"

They couldn't make out the words but it was like birds warbling in the early hours of the morning. A deep throbbing, and then a high voice alone as if a street singer was leading a chorus. They reached Mr Baltimore against, standing with his back to a tree.

"Loretta, don't dawdle so you're making us late!"

"My head hurts with pain, oh uncle may I go back to bed?"

"Stuff and nonsense there's no such thing as a headache, it's all imagination, vapours. Take three deep breaths and it will go away. Now out of my way you scoundrel, what are you looking at? Make way for the ladies sir." If the mad didn't understand the words he understood the fierce expression of Mr Baltimore's huge blue eyes and stout pink shaven cheeks and silted away from him like dirt before soap.

"These people should work," Mr Baltimore said, "What do they mean by flocking about the place like this?"

"But this is what we have come to see papa. These people are the revolution, they are the new Aserythe."

"If they are, then it is going to be a damnable dirty future here. Hold my arm Loretta...hold it, I say, take a grip of me and you girl, mind your mistress's whatnot before one of these villains makes off with it." Pointing his stick to Loretta's indispensable, that Ester was dangling negligently on her wrist by a coloured string. "Hold it properly; don't swing it about like that. Dear heaven I shall tell Whitmore to his face that he is mad. What are they shouting Adele?"

There were at the railings of the palace by now, those of the crowd who were closest were shaking the bars screaming, "Down with tyranny, down with the dirty pig! Down with Monsieur Veto!" More of the crowd flowing round to the place behind the palace. The press so thick here that it was impossible to move except as the people surged and flowed. Stench of dirt, stale wine, sweat and filthy rags. Unshaven faces, women with lice infested hair and blackened teeth in savage mouths, screaming insults in the blank windows and the balconies, the empty courtyards. Soldiers drawn up on the steps, more soldiers on the roof top, at the parapets. The white coats of the regulars, and the red of the Aenslad, and the navy blue of the elite guards.

They had come to a kind of haven beside one of the massive gate pillars, sheltered there by Mr Baltimore's bulk and his free use of his cane. "Get away from us damned you, give these ladies air, can't you see what you are doing, blast your eyes?" Fending off men, women, a hag with a basket of fish that even in that crowd stank astonishingly and who seemed determined to push her way in beside Loretta.

"Get off with you Madame and your horrible basket."

"Look at him!" the woman screamed suddenly. "Dirty aristocrat pig! And his fancy girls, look at 'em, some of the King's friends come out to jeer us!"

People began to turn towards them making a circle.

"Three of the Queen's whore women! Here, friends, let's teach 'em a lesson, strip them naked, an' one of 'em's yellow like sickness. Here's a good fish to begin with!" She had her fist deep in her basket, pulled out a slithering, limp handful of bloody silver, and hurled it at Loretta. It struck her on the breast and fell, and Loretta opened her mouth in a pitiful scream of horror, staring down at her ruined silk, at the thing lying at her feet. Adele leapt forward before her father could move and seize hold of the woman's basket, taking it out of her hands like a toy.

"Citizeness," she cried. "We're here as your friends, and are you going to treat us like this? Look there is enemy, in there!" She lifted the basket effortlessly and threw it over the mass like a declaration of war on the courtyard. "Ca ira ca ira!" Adele cried, "Liberty, fraternity."

The woman stared open mouthed as if the sight of Adele, her height, size, foreign handsomeness, the suddenness of the attack and the casual strength of flinging a loaded basket over a ten foot railing had taken ask power of speech from her. Before she could recover it a man better dressed that most of the crowd, tall and stooping, had gripped the woman's shoulder and swing her around towards him. He bent down and shouted something in her ear, pushing her deeper in the mass of people by the gate as if he had given her orders. Another stampede of the crowd pressed him almost in Adele's arms.

"You're foreigners?" he said. He steadied himself with one hand against some stonework. "You have not chosen a good day dor sightseeing." Even shouting at the top of this voice his tone carried a sneer in it. His eyes muddy brown and red rimmed, close and deep set, is nose kind of squashed at the tip above his large mouth of pointed teeth. Ugly as he was he carried a gun like a club as if he was in charge. His coat was black and he wore knee breeches and buckled shoes and stockings.

"We're not sightseeing," Adele said, raising her own voice, while her father was shouting into her ear. "What's the fellow saying? What a damned ugly face and big ego. Ask him what's happening."

But before Adele could answer, the man was torn away from them, the stooped, black shoulders, tricorn hat, powdered hair tied in a queue, seeming to be lifted up for a moment by the mob like a black flag and then vanishing into its heart again but purposefully as if the man had things to do there. For a second Adele had the feeling that the crowd was not what the thought it was, a great ill kept and unwashed ideal of Liberty surging up from the gutters as flowers grow on rocks but something else and horrible, the man in black with his pointed teeth, sneer, close set eyes was a representation of it.

There was no time to think, she was elbowed in the chest, her breast throbbing for a moment. Someone else trod on her foot, her father's cane was kicked nearly knocking him over and she had to grip his arm to prevent him getting sucked into the whirlpool of the crowd around the gate. Loretta clung to her who in her turn was wailing about her skirts, dress, and the violence and weeping with terror.

The chanting of the mob lifted again becoming a howl of expectation. Voices yelled, "The King! The King! He's coming out! Kill the pig, kill the pig!" An organised tone said as loud as the bells. Under the shouting the trample of marching feet, ring of steel. Adele twisted herself round. She could see through the railings and over Loretta's head a column of the Elite guard making their way to the gate beside her. Men were running ahead to open it. Military shouting, orders and a clashing of iron and the chanting died let isolated shout of hatred jeers of 'Where's the Mixerian, where's the whore? Down with the Veto."

The crowd staggered as the gates swung back and me with fixed bayonets made steel huge, a laneway for their comrades and the King. The column marched through the open gateway; Adele forced herself forward using her elbows and her height and strength until she was in the front of the crowd. He father appeared beside her still trying to best his hat back into shape, shouting at the top of his voice, "The villain I'd break his neck for this."

She could see the King himself now walking uncertainly among a dozen of gentlemen of the court. All of them in the hallow space between the lines of the Elite guards, the King in his velvet coat and white silk breeches, his dazzle of jewels like a mockery of his somehow thin figure and his heavy face at once florid and haggard and his eyes peering about as it he was short sighted or could not understand what was happening or why. A thin man in black obsequious and yet triumphant beside him seemed to guide him along. Behind them came half a dozen ladies and two children clinging to the hands of one of them. A girl of twelve or so and a small light green haired boy in velvet clothes and a frilled white shirt kicking up the leaves as he walked. Adele could see him between the marching guards. A little boy of eight or nine tugging at his mother's hand

What that the Dauphin? The woman bent down to him, her face white and her eyes red from crying. Adele was so close she could almost lean over the barrier and touch the boy and his mother. The woman looked up and met the green of Adele's eyes with her own lime coloured then straighten herself with a habitual arrogance. The Queen, the Queen of Aserythe, the Mixerian. Julia Andre de Richeau. Her eyes re rimmed a slight flush mounting into the pallor of her face as if something in Adele's stare had angered her. Perhaps to see a gentlewoman looking at her humiliation was harder to support than the jeers of the crowd.

There were not so many jeers now so a quietness and tenseness spread a stillness of one the wasp swarm murmuring and surging. The trample of the soldier then the grinding of nailed boots on grave and an officer's shouted command.

"What's happening, where are they going Adele? Was that the King?" Mr Baltimore nudging Adele and then tapping a young officer in front of them on his shoulder. "What's happening, sir?"

The officer turned astonished perhaps at the sound of another realm and looked up for the first time into Mr Baltimore's then Adele's face. A short sallow faced captain with lank dark blue hair under a shabby hat and such intensity in his dark brown eyes was like seeing emptiness.

"My father asks you what is happening sir and where the King is going. We are Talmish visitors and friends."

His mouth curled at that in amusement or contempt or both. "The King is going to the Assembly to put himself under its protection." Then as if he could not contain it he said in Fagiran, "Che coglione!" not to her but to himself and he turned away like a man preparing to spit. Then he turned back to her scarcely changing his expression said, "What part of Talmond are you from?"

"From Menos," she said astonished at the question and even more the business like way he put it. "If you have heard of it, it's in the southern part of Talmond."

"I know," he said abruptly and then, "Are all women so tall in Talmond?"

"What is he saying Adele, what is he saying?" her father asked.

"He's asking whether all women in Menos are as tall as I am."

"Good grief, is the man mad? I though you were asking him about the King. What-"

She told him what he had said at the assembly and suddenly the officer gripped her by her wrist. "Come Madame," he said. "Come with me. You say you're friends of Aserythe. You shall see how we bring 1000 years of history to an end. Come." he began pulling her after him as if she could have no business in the world but to obey him.

"But sir my father-"

"Bring him, come sir we shall go to the Assembly."

"My cousin and -" Adele cried in protest looking around for Loretta but she was already beside her not by her own will but by Ester's assistance.

"Citizeness," he whispered, his sallow cheeks flushed dark then went pale again. "You'll come too. Quickly follow us sir and take care that we're not separated." He renewed his grasp on Adele and began to force his way through the crowd. There wasn't any violence as the crowd separated to make a path for the officer to pass through; he towed Adele along as if he was indeed a skiff pulling a tall yacht towards the harbour. In their wake Mr Baltimore came grasping Loretta's arms in one arm and Ester in the other. They were almost one the heels of the rearguard of the King's column and perhaps the crowd thought that they were part of it. Indeed it soon became clear that it did. Seeing a young officer in his captain's uniform appearing to lead a group of aristocrats and their oriental servant towards the same destiny as the King and his family. Shouts began to lift again in the murmuring, "Its Hilary! No no! It's another whore! Hang them, hang the leeches! Hang them!"

Hedged in by the crowd, pressed against, fists raised, more shouting until it was as if they had really been arrested, faces staring jeering spitting insults, a woman reaching out to claw at Adele's face. The crowd being surging forward to see what was happening, who was being led away. Shouts of 'they've got the prostitute! Give us Hilary, give her to us! Did you suck the whore's breast last night? How did they taste?"

Adele scarcely understood the meaning of what was shouted, yet she flushed with anger as if a bucket of filth had been flung on her. She had an urge to answer whoever had shouted and in anger clenched her fists to a point where blood might seep through her skin. The officer was faster, pulling her along to between lines of guards crossing the road and climbing steps leading to a building.

"Here! The officer said, allowing her to collect herself for a moment. "Here is the heart of Aserythe, they use to break horses here but now they break kings." He looked at her as if he meant to draw her portrait from memory at some other time. He gave the impression that he could have done it to exactly copy the green of her riding dress, the sky blue of her hair, the leaf green of her eyes, the strong set of her mouth all without another glance. "The other woman, your cousin? She's not Talmish?"

"She's Creole, from Wendell, her mother is my aunt."

"Ah," the officer said, "Present me please." Suddenly glancing at himself, at the uniform, boots and a swift blush he had shown before. The coat was threadbare at the cuffs and colour; the boots were too much too large and cracked across the instep and seemed to have been greased than polished. Their tops gaped like buckets round boyish bony knees in ill fitting white breaches.

"You've not told me your name sir," Adele said, her father was occupied resettling his cravat and waistcoats, making sure that his watch was still there unstolen.

The young gave an impatient downward jerk of his head. "Granger, Captain Tyson Granger, at your service citizeness"

"Mademoiselle Loretta de Martinique," Hester said, presenting her cousin. She scarcely know why she did not day 'citizeness'. Perhaps for the sake of that vile shouting at her a few moments ago, outside when the crowd had taken her for the Queen's friend.

Loretta had put out her hand to be kissed with her usual slow languor, her eyes taking in the officer's appearance, the corners of her eyes crinkled with amusement and malice. All her terror of the past hour had vanished as if they had never existed. She was safely in a building so there was no more danger that she could see and there was a man in front of her.

'Dear me, she is a strange creature' Adele thought as she watched for the melting of the young captain's bones, it was like witnessing a candle bent in front of a fire. Loretta's amusement was too open and his face flamed then became pale and in his humiliation he drew himself to his full height.

"I have the honour of making you smile," he said. "Good day citizeness." then swung his heel and marched away into the throngs of people already filling the hallway, his boot tops sagging and gaping so that he had to walk slightly straddle legs like a horseman on foot.

Loretta laughed, clear ringing and bubbling, "He looks like Puss in boots!" she said, her voice piercing the noise, the echoes of the clattering of footsteps. The officer's shoulders quivered as if he had been shot between them by an arrow. He almost halted and seemed to turn back to them but instead went deliberately holding himself straight.

"Loretta, he heard you!"

"What does it matter? Why are we here? Where is this? Ah look at my dress! Look at what that woman did!" she held out her skirts, stained with silver and blood, the hems were torn and the chiffon ruching was hanging by a couple of threads.

Beside her Mr Baltimore was staring around the crowded hall with open contempt. "So this is their parliament. It's nothing more than a damnable circus. Well since we're here let us see what sort of jackanapes nonsense they are making it." He began pushing his way towards where the crowd was thickest, around a great open doorway. Adele took Loretta and Ester by the arms and brought them along her, of course her cousin protested but stopped with the gentle pushing of Ester.

Mr Baltimore disappeared into the main Assembly chamber. When Adele managed to shepherd her two companions after him through the doorway, into a dark corridor and then into the vast open space of the courtyard, with its banks of seats and benches, its overhanging galleries and the high dais opposite the entrance where she was standing, she couldn't see her father anywhere. The benches were half full of men who must presumable be members of the Assembly, but the floor in front of them, the corridors and the galleries were packed and crammed with people who looked like the advance guard of the crowd outside. Rough hungry faces, red clothes, lank greasy hair; women in rags and headscarves; fists and clubs shaking, voices shouting insults and men leaning over the bars of the platforms to scream at the men below.

As if the Assembly was theirs now and not the elected members of the Assembly. Only on the dais two men stood out like at least symbols of authority, one of them extraordinarily enough was the King. Adele recognised him even at that distance by his breast glittering with stars and also by the way that he sat. A man shouting just above her head leaning so far out over the balcony that looking up she could see his face. It was the same man who had spoken to her by the gates of the palace, the same crooked pointed teeth and yellow face and narrow set sunken eyes.

"Let's have an end to this farce of a monarchy!" he was yelling. "That idiot of an imbecile! Let him abdicate!" Beside and behind him other men took up the cry like soldiers shouting orders. "Abdication! Decheance! Down with the last of the Capets! Down with the Veto!" Around Adele men and women were forcing their way into the chamber, pushing her forward. She was on the floor of the chamber, but no one cared.

A group of men were on their feet shouting, "The King can't sit with us? The King out of the Assembly! Out of the Assembly! Against the Constitution!"

She was almost below the dais now and still holding Loretta and Ester by their arms. The man beside the King bent his head to listen to another man who in turn whimpered to the King. The King stood up, pale and dull faced, his eyes staring about as they had in the garden not long before. He seemed to shrug in submission and a man bowed and guided him down the steps and under the dais. Adele could see an iron grille there cutting off a small room from the chamber. The room seemed to be packed with men and women; she even thought that she saw the Queen among them. Two men with a lever and a hammer were trying to break the away, and the noise in the chamber was so great that the hammer blows and the ring of the iron were almost lost in it. The metal came down with a clash leaving the women to cover their faces with handkerchiefs and choke on the dust cloud.

At Adele's back a man said, "Miss Baltimore! What are you doing here? Where is your father?"

She turned; it was the Count's messenger of the early morning. He looked exhausted, as if much more time had passed since they last met than a few hours.

"I told you dreadful things would soon happen," he said. "They have barely begun. Where is your father?" He was looking around as he spoke, not only for her father, she thought, but for others, or other things. She had seen huntsmen with the same almost absent yet concentrated expression as they studied the countryside, hills, woods and the run of the river all while looking for the fox or a lost hound. "There he is!" he whispered. "Stay here, I'll fetch him." He was gone within a long stride and back in an instant.

Mr Baltimore was protesting loudly, "What the devil sir? Be quiet? Why? In this damned uproar?"

Until the messenger brought them together and pushed them into a corner under the dais while the noise continued around them, the broken grille lay at their feet and from where Adele stood she could see the King, the Queen and all their entourage crammed into the narrow room that the grille had protected or screened off, no more than two steps away from her. In the Assembly chamber itself the noise had grown more furious. The crowd jostled and fought its way here and there. Knots of men stopped to harangue one another or the dais or the galleries. The galleries shouted down to the floor, insults or encouragement, abuse or orders or defiance although heaven know what they might be defying. The floor returned the shouts and made enormous gestures of determination and fervour. Here in their shadowed backwater it seemed almost quiet by contrast and the messenger's urgent whispering could make itself heard easily enough against the yelling, the stamping, the banging of wooden benches and the chants of 'Decheance, Decheance! Down with the Vets an end to the tyrants!"

"The King has destroyed everything," the messenger was saying, "in another hour, by tonight at least he and the Queen will be prisoners. They are prisoners already in everything but name. There is one chance in 10000 of getting them out of this place and to safety. You're the only people who can give it to them."

"Us?" Cried Mr Baltimore, "Get the King to safety? If he is not safe here-"

"I implore you!" the messenger said, clapping is had across Mr Baltimore's mouth and staring around him as if spies and worse were at their backs. "If you shout like that we're going to be all dead. Don't you understand what is happening?"

"I understand nothing!" Mr Baltimore said furiously, struggling to free his mouth from restraint. "I don't know who you are sir or why you're telling us such rubbish or what the devil is happening except that it is more nonsense and I'm sick of it, sick to death of this damnable kennel of a place. You should see Menos and then you would know how a city be run. Liberty sir! If this is Liberty, give me clean streets instead."

The man made a harsh sound of impatience and swung round to Adele.

"They'll have his head if they can. Would you help them out of here if it was possible? Would you dare it?" He had gripped both her wrists in his hands, so fiercely that he was crushing the sleeve buttons into her wrists bone and hurting her. His eyes looked into hers as if they were burning, blue slightly bloodshot eyes, and deadened shadows under them. There was a stubble of reddish beard on his cheeks and jawbone and a nerve twitched at the tightened corner of his mouth. She had not liked him at first seeing and she liked him no better now. Heaven knew she had no prejudices of class but he had not a gentleman's face or manner or a servant's respectfulness and she didn't like to be handles by anyone gentle or simple. It was the second time he had grasped hold of her that morning as if she was something to be dragged about. It seemed to be a Aserythian characteristic and she didn't care for it, in him or the captain.

"You seem to assume that we're friends to the aristocracy sir." she said coldly. "We're not, we're friends to Aserythe and to the revolution and to progress nothing more."

He stared at her for a moment as if she had said that she was a murderer then such exhaustion came into his face as seemed to dissolve his features into a grey despair. Even the burning in his eyes went out like embers leaving grey blue ash and then he recovered himself. His mouth hardened and curved in contempt and pity.

"You're friends of that?" he said jerking his thumb towards to chamber beside them, "They're lice girl, crawled out of the panelling."

"And who make them into lice?" she cried freeing her other hand. "That family in there!" and stopped midway. The King was looking at her, vacantly as if he was looking at a tree. Someone had found him a chair and the fair green haired child had come beside hi knee and was playing with a bandalore, throwing it down and drawing it up over and over against absorbed in his game. The Queen, a score of ladies and court gentlemen, the other child - the princess, were crammed in behind the King like birds in a cage at the market, with no room to move. The ceiling was so low that one tall man have to bend his head to avoid it. The boy looked at Adele and smiled. Something patiently bewildering about the smile as if he was so tired of asking why they were there and what was happening that he had almost given up thinking about it.

"You could help them," the messenger was whispering. "I don't know what you've heard in Talmond about all this but I tell you it's noting good that's happening. Hell is opening for all of us. Please save their lives at least and one day God will reward you by letting you understand what you've done. They could walk out of here with your party only if your father gave the King his coat and hat and you walked with him. You've been seen with a stout gentleman in Talmish clothes, no one would think of it. The Queen in your cousin's hat and scarf, the two children with your lady's maid. Please for the compassion's sake do you want me to get down on my knees to be you to be human? Another hour and it will be too late."

"What is he saying Adele? What is it, what does he want?" her father demanded.

"He wants what is -" she begun to say, "Impossible" and stopped as she had stopped a minuet earlier in her accusation of the royal family. The boy was still looking at her, almost as if he was saying, "I'm tired and unhappy here. Please would you take me away?" It was the most stupid nonsense and yet she could hear the words in her head as if they had been spoken.

"It-it's ridiculous," she said, she told her father as quickly and as quietly as his interruption and the noise around them would allow what the messenger said. All this time she felt as though the messenger himself trying to influence her mind, the tone of her voice as if he was a burning glass to focus sunlight on her until it was so painful she must give in.

"But this is his own parliament!" Mr Baltimore was saying. "They're his servants! What do you mean save him? Bring him out of here? If he's not safe here-"

"Look around you!" the messenger whispered his grip now fallen on Mr Baltimore's thick arm like a hawk's talons into a plump hare. "Whose servants do they look like? Not his, please I'm begging you to help."

"And if we're caught?" Adele said.

The man shut his eyes and again his face seemed to dissolve and grow deadened with exhaustion. "I know he's not your king and that this isn't your country. I have no right to ask you and you've every rig to be afraid."

"Afraid?" Adele said in fury, "For myself I'm afraid of nothing but my father and cousin? She has estates here and you know that, we're here to see to them. What would happen- How could you ask me-?"

"I know," he put up a long hand and rasped it across his chin and up the side of his face as if he was trying to wake himself. "And even if you agreed the King would not, he has failed us this past two years. It would be too much to expect him to make a right choice now but I'm sorry," he looked at her as if he was already asleep with his bloodshot blue eyes open. She felt like looking into them to find out what she could see inside his head, into his mind and soul. It was a strange extraordinary sensation like looking into the holes in a mask and seeing another face quite different than the mask. The impression was so brief and his face altered again so quickly that she didn't know what she had seen and was no longer sure of why she thought of a mask.

She wanted to say, "I would help them if it lay with me alone." But he was turning away shrugging, there was self mockery set in his mouth and Adele didn't want to make another claim of courage. She already felt a fool enough; she looked again towards the royal family in their cage. The King still stared vacantly into space; the courtiers whispered urgently behind him, a woman was crying half hiding her great brown eyes with a lace handkerchief as the Queen sat like a statue with her arm around her daughter's waist. The dauphin still played with his toy when it hit his father's shoe, who seemed surprised to see his son and himself in such a place.

_'It was madness'_ Adele thought, _'How could that man have imagined- The King of Aserythe wearing her father's coat and hat then escape his own parliament!'_

As she thought of it there was the sound of cannon fire and for a moment the Assembly grew quiet. Then the cannon roared again and the crack of the muskets like hailstones beating on the roof filled the silence. A man rushed past Mr Baltimore and went to knell beside the King. "Your Majesty, they're fighting, the Guards-the people-they're fighting. They will be massacred, they have no orders sire."

The courtiers behind the King had come swiftly forward and caught the newcomer by his shoulders as if he had meant to attack their master.

"They must cease fire," the King said, something like a ghost of energy in his face and voice for a moment. "They must not fire on my people. No one must be killed. Bring me paper and I'll write the order which you must take to them. No one must be killed do you hear me?" Someone gave him paper and something to write with. He wrote the order on his knee, Adele could see over the kneeling ma's head the scrawl of unsteady lines like the theatre shows in Menos except that this was so close to the stage.

Her father was tugging her arm, "Your cousin is fainting," he said. "We must take her outside for air." he said it as though the fault of Loretta's weakness was partly Adele's. "Besides we haven't had breakfast. What are you gaping at child hurry up."

Outside the Manege when they had succeeded in forcing their way through the chamber and the foyer, the sounds of fighting had grown to a deafening battlefield. Clouds of smoke, the crashes of cannons and the whistle of its massive charge. There were bonfires of muskets and the men running from smoke. White coats, red and navy blue. Many men falling to their death. She saw a man fall, his body turning though the air, in fright she gripped her father's arm and could no move. Men fighting battle, she had read stories of great battles and how glorious it was to fight a battle. One man was running but collapsed on the ground then another, and another. Loretta screamed as she saw two men fall then a third, a fourth and a fifth staggered over to finally fall in front of them.

She clung to her father's arm fearing of fainting over the sight of men dying like flies one after the other.

"They're fighting!" her father said, "Good heaven's sake! What next? Look at the poor fellow."

A woman ran screaming with an axe uplifted over her red headscarf and striking the kneeling dying, dead man a tremendous blow in the back of what was left of his skull. "Liberty or Death!" the woman shrieked then ran away in the other direction possibly to find another victim but someone's bullet caught her in the back causing her to twist round and fall facing her last victim still clutching the bloody axe.

"What devils these people are!" Mr Baltimore said, "Don't look Adele, Loretta! Both of you keep a good hold of my arm. You girl support your mistress, don't faint child. Ah wait until we get home."

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	3. Chapter 2

**Hello people and now that I kinda have reviews I'll update**

**Enjoy people but don't blame me if it scares you in any way**

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Chapter 2**

"We shall leave tomorrow," Mr Baltimore said. "I've never felt so outraged in my life fighting in the streets! What do they imagine visitors must think of them?"

"I doubt if they care Papa," Adele said, "I doubt if we shall find horses either," She had her cuffs turned up and was sponging Loretta's forehead with scented vinegar while Ester held the basin and towel.

"I'm dying here," Loretta said, "Why did you make me go out today? I should have still been in bed."

"You're still in bed or at least on a couch, there is nothing in the world wrong with you. If you don't sit up at once and drink your broth I shall lose all patience with you. Now sit up!"

The great blue velvety eyes opened in shock, the lashes thick as fringes of dark gold silk but lacked such intelligence in them. Adele put the vinegar sponge into the basin without much care whether it splashed Loretta and Ester or not then grasped her cousin by the shoulders, "Sit up! Drink your broth or I shall do something violent. I've been nursing you for two hours at least and I'm sick of it. Ester make her drink it."

"You hurt me," Loretta was whimpering, tears rolled down the porcelain face. Ester drew the golden head against her shoulder, smoothed the peach satin cheek and gave Adele a look from her jet mother of pear eyes that was impossible to interpret. Anger? Irony? Adele had a small inclination to try and went with long impatient strides to the window. The apartment was empty now in the late afternoon as it had been at 3 o'clock that morning. The fighting had ended long ago, at least of any organised kind and even the occasional musket fire and screams of me hunted down was no more than an occasional horror in the distance.

It had taken them 3 hours and more to make their way home and another quarter of an hour to persuade the old servant to come down from Madame de Martinique's apartment and let them in. Madame's garcon was gone and so were their own Aserythian servants, the old lady was locked in her room dead to the world and its terrors with a dose of laudanum. Only the old servant Margareet was still shuffling about the house like a ghost. She had promised them a meal but except for the cup of chicken broth for Loretta it was still only a promise.

"Does the villain expect me to change my shirt buttons? What am I paying him for? Gallivanting off like an apprentice sneaking to the fair. I should have brought proper servants and expecting to find decent ones in some country like this. I remember with your mother-"

"Papa it was you-" Adele began but it was futile to remind her father of facts at times of difficulty. There was a man running along the street or rather limping that running, his shirt stained with blood and seemed to not have a coat or hat. He stumbled but saved himself by leaning against the doorway then looked back as if he was making sure that there weren't any pursuers and then up towards the window where Adele stood leaning over the balcony. It was their 'messenger' of the morning and of the Assembly chamber, he made to lift his arm to her but his face was like wax and all blood and colour had gone from it. It seemed that he called something out then took a half a dozen more stumbling half steps before collapsing under her balcony. In the distance she could swear that there was shouting and the barking of hounds.

"I must go downstairs," she cried, "Papa help me there's someone, the Count's messenger, and he's below wounded." She was already out of the room and taking the marble stairs three at a time.

"Adele you'll break your neck if you don't be careful." she did trip over her skirts and fell the last six steps; luckily she held her hands out to break the fall.

"I told you!"

She took no notice of him and wrenched back the bolts that old Margareet had pushed back when she let them in. The man lay on the step unconscious. She picked him up by the shoulders and began to drag him inside. She could hear the hunt now as clear as if it was inside the apartment. Running feet, sabots, and nailed boots.

"Papa! Take his legs. Quickly!"

"What the devil? Mr Baltimore did lift the man's legs and they were inside as Adele closed the door. Seeing the bloodstains on one stone step and nothing to cover them. Shocking to her father Adele bent down and using her skirt wiped them as best as she cold. There was dust in the corner of the doorway and she picked it up and scattered over what was left of the mark. With the doors shut, bolted and the crashing of feet within 10 yards, five outside the door Adele relaxed a little.

"Adele!"

"Be quiet Papa." she whispered.

A dozen, twenty, thirty hunters clattering and shouting by checking 10 yards further on the entrance to a stable courtyard hammering on timber gates. "Open up! In the name of the Section! Open up!"

Listening, holding her breath if they turned back then there was more shouting as if someone had opened a wicket door protesting to the intrusion then there was a female scream from a window somewhere. "This way! Down here, he must have gone down here! Follow me!" The sounds were dying away. On the black ad white checker marble floor laid the man unconscious with blood spreading slowly over his leg.

"Upstairs Papa. We must bind his leg and then find a doctor. He's bleeding to death."

Mr Baltimore was bending down to examine him. "Good heaven's child it the man who was here earlier."

"I know Papa but he'll still bleed to death if we don't do something right now. Give me your shirt." Before he could object she had pulled his shirt front out of his breeches top and ripped a long strip from it. "We must bind him above the wound, if we can find it."

There was a ragged hole a few inches above the knee one the inside of the left thigh. The blood was pumping heavily from it, dark crimson in the shadowy light of the hall. She made a tourniquet, twisting the linen strip into a cord and tied it as tight round the leg above the wound. It needed to be tighter still but already the bleeding had lessened. They lifted him again by the shoulders and knees carrying him up the stairs. Mr Baltimore was cursing all up every step.

"My breeches will be ruined as well you can't get bloodstains out of buck skin, it's impossible. What the devil has this man done to get himself shot? I knew that he was fool the first time i met him. Don't push me Adele; I can't climb backwards as fast as you can go forwards. I shall drop the fellow if you don't be careful."

They carried him into the apartment into Adele's room.

"Ester!" Adele called, "Someone has been hurt, and you must run down to the floor below and get the old woman there to go with you for a doctor. At once as fast as you can or he'll die."

The bleeding had become bad again with their trying to carry him up the stairs. It ran swiftly from the wound like a stream. Adele had to lean against the bed post for a second to prevent herself from fainting. "Give me a spoon Papa. I must press something-"

"A spoon?" cried Mr Baltimore as though he had never heard of one. "Look at your sheets! Poor devil, I'd say that he's done for by the looks of him. I knew that we shouldn't have stayed in Ishe, it is sheer madness."

She couldn't answer him as she was searching for anything on her dressing table there would serve to twist the tourniquet tight enough. A comb, the handle of a hairbrush? Behind her Ester was by the bed quiet and silent as a shadow, touching the man's leg with her long fingers whispering.

"I thought I told you to get help."

The girl took no notice of her as he had bent down and was putting her ear close to the man's chest then lying against his heart. From next door her mistress called, "Ester where are you, what is going on?" Eater loosened the man's belt and from her apron pockets took out a small knife and began to slice the cloth of the breeches above and below the tourniquet. She pulled the last of it gently free and the blood gushed and then stopped. She had her thumb pressed deep into the man's naked groin.

"You see this place Madame?" She said, "Put your thumb where mine is and I shall so something for him otherwise he will die." She spoke so confidently that Adele did as she bid without thinking it was strange to obey. She had to shut her eyes against what was below her, not the naked sex but the blood. She had not thought that so much blood could come from a wound and leave the man alive. Nor had she though that it would make her feel faint, she began to count under her breath to control the nausea. 1, 2, 3, she had reached 49 before Ester came back with a cloth bundle; she opened it on the bed beside the man's leg. Something that looked like a large hollow nut, stoppered with a bundle of leaves, other leaves rolled up like fat green cigars and tied round with fibres. A glass tube of powder and beneath the stoppered nut was a green coiled snake with a flat viper head. The shock of seeing it was so sudden and intense that Adele slackened the pressure of her thumb resulting in the blood spurting out warming her wrist. She dared not to look at the reptile as she was ashamed of herself and wanted to be sick then was irrationally furious with the girl.

"That thing!"

"The deuce, a snake!" Mr Baltimore said.

The viper if it was a viper lifted its head, Ester who had gripped Adele's finger and thumb pressed them down again then taking the snake by its throat laid it on the dying man's bloody shirt. "If Monsieur would fetch some milk in a little dish?"

It was a case of arguing or obeying and Adele felt too sick to argue, "Fetch her some milk," she whispered, "Please Papa. While you're downstairs tell the old lady to fetch a doctor and hurry!"

"No white doctor," Ester cried, "He'll tell other people then you'll all be taken away."

Adele almost lifted her thumb again in astonishment. The girl's finger held hers in place gently but with strength. "I know how to heal him," the girl said, "Our kind of medicine. This is nothing but please the milk. Sarosi must have a drink." She had unstoppered the nut and was scooping paste into the palm of her and. The bright red paste then so crumbled a leaf which turned the mixture to a dull purple. A thin smoke seemed to be rising from it and the girl moved the large soft pellet she had make from hand o hand as if it had become very hot. She laid it down on the sheet then took her knife to cut away the tourniquet and patted the man's cheek twice softly the hard. Even in his unconscious state he opened his mouth grunting. She pushed the rolled up tourniquet into his mouth like a gag which his teeth clenched on it and quickly she buried the knife into to the wound cutting and probing and slicing the flesh. He seemed to arch his back in pain opening his blue eyes and would have screamed if it wasn't for the twisted linen. Something rolled out of the wound and lay between the man's legs in a mess of blood. The little black musket ball, quickly Ester took her lump of paste and pressed it deep into the hole.

This time the man did scream chocked on the gag and lost consciousness again. The girl was cutting strips from the sheet making bandages, pressing, twisting, binding and tying them together. All the time her hands were moving, the little green snake seemed to follow them with its eyes. Mr Baltimore returned with a wine glass of milk, the girl took it clicked her tongue at the sight of the glass though demanded a dish. She hesitated and ripped away the man's shirt exposing his toned hard stomach. She poured a little of milk into his navel and instantly the snake moved towards it. Its forked tongue flicking while the triangular head and jaws dipped into the white liquid, the cup of flesh.

The girl whispered and the snake lifted its head then turned it way and that. "Loa loa rada come, Sarosi heal flesh, heal your friend, help the gros bon ange strengthen him. You shall have much milk if he lives. Don't give him to the Grand Boais; don't let him go down the path." She went on whispering but in another language which no one could understand but her. Her tone pleading coaxing, talking to the little serpent.

"Lift your hand," she said to Adele. The snake moved hesitated then slid down into the man's groin; it seemed to nibble at his sex, the forked tongue swift as lightning.

"You're mad!" Mr Baltimore cried in horror as he made to scratch at the viper but the girl prevented him.

"He's telling if he is truly a friend," she said as Adele drew her father away.

Behind them Loretta's voice sounded demanding, "What are you doing? Why do you not come when I call?"

"You know what I'm doing," Ester said, "I'm with Sarosi."

Loretta met Adele's eyes trying to look as if she didn't know what the girl meant, "It's all wicked foolishness." she said her voice low and uncertain.

"Come and look matelotte." Loretta went slowly but obediently.

"Come Madame Adele, come monsieur, Sarosi is healing," They stood behind the kneeling oriental girl as the snake coiled itself on the bandage around the wound. It stretched out its head and throat exactly where the wound was. Blood had begun to stain the line and they could see the pale yellow of the viper's throat pulsing slowly in the same rhythm as the man's heartbeat.

"He must be admired," Ester said, "He's a king of serpents, conquers death. Stroke him matelotte, touch him Madame, monsieur gently,"

Loretta put out a finger and stroked the flat diamond head as her whole body shivered as if she was chilled to the bone.

"Madame Adele show him that you're his friend, touch him."

"I'll do no such thing."

"Please," Loretta said, "Please Adele, I beg you do what she says and you uncle you must." Her voice urgent so unlike its usual languid petulance or honeyed caressing that Adele did as she asked. Cold scaliness she found herself shivering.

"Uncle please."

"You've gone mad. I would not touch that thing for all the money in the word. It should be killed and that girl should be-"

The snake looked at him, it was not possible but it seemed to grow larger until it resembled the man's thigh as his whole body covered him. Mr Baltimore's hand went out his fingers shaking as he touched the armoured throat before stamping out of the room.

"I know what I would do with her," he said, "and with that thing." he made a strange noise before rushing to his room. Adele found him sitting on his bed with the basin between his knees and his face green.

"That damned chocolate you gave me, wretched sickly stuff. I never could stomach them and all that blood. I don't know what that witch is up to but she seems to have stopped the bleeding. We need to get a proper doctor."

"That snake-" Adele said, she wanted to be sick herself.

"Snake, what snake? What are you talking about?"

She stared at him and felt the sickness rising up then had to find a basin herself. After a few minuets she felt better but was drained of strength, slowly she dragged herself back to Loretta and Ester beside the wounded man. They had covered him with bedclothes and he lay unconscious as his face still wax pale but no longer with the look of death about it. The nose curved and powerful and the mouth clamped shut as if to keep life in.

"The snake-?" Adele said and found she was whispering, Loretta looked at her astonished, was it real? Pretend? Ester simply looked at her then away. She began sponging the man's forehead saying, "He'll get better. Ten twelve day he can walk a little. Don't send for anyone to heal him as they will tell the police and you'll be put in prison."

"We must wash away all the blood," Adele said trying to take control of the situation and herself, "Why so you say that about the police? What can you possibly know about it?" It was so obviously true that she felt a worse fool than before. I was impossible to take the bloodied sheet from under the man at the present. There was a snake she told herself. There was! The snake seemed to look up at her from the bottom of the china basin on the washstand as she leaned over it. A green snake, it had been there it had! Then the certainty was gone in s new spasm of retching and there was room for nothing in her mind but the blood. That dark red flood from inside his thigh, the man who had knelt down in the road and looked towards them his face gone smashed away the blood pouring like a red scarf. Then the woman with the axe, she had thought of nothing that shocked her. She had dreamt of battles since she was a child of heroic actions and of what life would be like it she was a man and now she was worse that a kitchen maid worse that Loretta. I'll not be sick, she commanded herself, I will not! Then had to rush to spew up what felt like her heart.

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The old servant Margareet found a doctor for them the next day. Their own servants had come back at 6 o'clock in the morning drunk, the valet in someone else's coat and a gold watch fell out of the coat cuff as he staggered into the apartment at Mr Baltimore's furious summons. He and the maid were dismissed immediately so they had no servants beside Ester.

"It doesn't matter," Mr Baltimore cried, "Good riddance to 'em damned thieving villains. I'll have you arrested!" He shouted after them from Adele's window. "I'll have you hanged!"

The valet turned and shook his fist a d fell over, the maid picked him up and they staggered away down the street towards the river. "Villains!" yelled Mr Baltimore in case they had no already discovered is opinion of them.

"Hush Papa you'll wake him."

But the man was already awake tossing in fever and muttering sentences that were intelligible in themselves and yet had no meaning for Adele or her father. Colonel Aracand? Who was he and the men waiting at Compiegne. Why was it too late? Curse the cowards and then 'No you devils No! No! He stared fully awake and stared at them as if he didn't know who they were or where he was.

"You're safe," Adele told him, we've sent for a doctor for you, you're safe here."

He still lay in her bed because there was o other and she slept in the ante room on the mattress provided by Margareet. His beard had grown bright red and his skin already slightly tanned with the sun and weather was darker with the gun smoke, dried blood and dust from whatever fighting he had been in.

"We must wash you before the doctor comes." Adele said. Who would object to their caring fro a wounded man? Although by miracle the man had not died from Ester's treatment. They sent Margareet to set someone even before their servants came back to be dismissed. "We must have you clean at least." Adele said, "even if we cant shave you."

It gave her a feeling of strength to prepare to wash him. She knew that he hated it and would have prevented her if he could. It was like taking a small and charitable revenge on him for her own fearsome sickness and horrors yesterday.

"Ester will do it," Mr Baltimore said, "Ester! Ester!"

"She may hold the basin and towels and tell her to bring clean sheets. There should be some in the cupboard at the end of the corridor, I saw them there."

She had to lift him bodily for Ester to put the clean sheet, blanket and towels under him. Although he was a tall and strong made man, Adele didn't have problems carrying him as if all the blood he lost made half of his weight. She laid him down again and between them stripped him naked ignoring his shivering protests. After a moment or two he said nothing looking at them with eyes at once dulled and feverish as if he no longer cared what they did.

He had a fine body, broad and deep chest, wide shoulders, narrow waist and long horseman's lean and hard muscled legs. Everytime she touched the cold sponge the ridges of muscles could be seen on his stomach. His arms were slightly tanned to the elbow and his legs from ankle to knee and there was a deep v-shaped area on his chest where his shirt colour must usually lie open. The rest of his body was white as paper from the loss of blood.

"You've sent for your own people's doctor? Ester said, she didn't look at Adele as she said it. Like the cook in the kitchen handling meat she lifted the man's sex sponging under it, "He is strong," she said, "but he'll die, I've told you."

For a moment Adele felt so angry she was astonished at herself, "Of course he must have a real doctor, he'll die otherwise." The bandage the girl had put on last night was bloodstained but not extensively. He had begun to bleed again with their handling, Adele thought it was wiser to leave him alone but cleanliness if essential, it was the worst thing in hospitals that they were always filthy. She put her hand to lift the wounded leg to clean it but Ester grabbed her wrist.

"No Madame no."

"How dare you!"

Ester looked at her without insolence, defiance, fear or any discoverable emotion, she just simply looked.

"Cover him up." Adele said, "We must keep him warm," she felt herself shaking. "Your mistress spoils you but that doesn't mean that you can be insolent to me."

"Yes Madame".

The girl was quiet, so submissive so-there was no word for it but courteous-so in her slavery-that Adele felt bitterly ashamed, and then more angry as though somehow the girl had triumphed over her, made her an utter fool in her own eyes. She began to say something anything that would restore and establish their proper relationship. The girl still looked at her as if she knew what Adele was thinking.

"I can image beating her," Adele thought, horror at her own feelings and anger towards the girl's calmness. "I can understand why they beat their slaves." she had to shut her eyes.

When she opened them again the moment was gone and common sense had come back. Daylight and cleanliness and a sick man and a servant who happened to have black hair and midnight eyes.

"Fetch him some broth and I shall feed him," the girl went obedient ad meek, leaving her in command of herself as well as her patient. She only had to glance down where the covers hid his leg to remember the woman and the axe. Had that woman dreamed of heroics as a child?

Adele laid her forehead against the cold surface of the bedside table clenching her teeth. When the doctor come, she was determined that she would stay and watch everything.

He came soon after 9 o'clock when the sick man was asleep again, his fever seeming to have nearly gone and he could breathe easier. Or so Adele thought, the doctor was horrified at his appearance and at what Adele told him had already been done.

"You might have killed him!" he cried, Mr Baltimore nodded a sombre agreement. "Quackery to let a vile creature touch him! Touch such a wound with who know what devilments! Wyatt, Wyatt the bleeding bowl quickly boy." His apprentice wearing a dirty Holland coat with bloodstains on the sleeves and with fingernails that were dark as though they were in mourning for al the patients he had helped to kill. He unwrapped a white china bowl from a neckcloth then taking a worn red morocco case of scalpels from his sagging coat pocket.

The doctor had meanwhile woken their patient with a hearty jerk of his shoulder, "Well citizen? What have you been doing eh? Let us have a look," He pulled back the sheets and clicked his tongue at the sight of the bandage. "You're lucky gangrene has not set in yet." he said and before Adele could even guess what he meant to do let alone prevent him. He ripped of the bloodstained linen as if he was a child unwrapping a present. The wounded man screamed with pain and jerked his knees sending the doctor staggering. "Hold him down Wyatt, hold him, my by he's delirious and no wonder."

"What are you doing?" Adele protested, "You have hurt him terribly!" the blood was pumping out, "Are you mad?"

"That is doctor's business Madame. Stand away, please stand aside, we want to cure. You have near killed him and now I must make good the damage. Look how well he is bleeding already! Catch it in a bowl Wyatt it will save cutting him up. Draw two and then we can staunch him for today. I'll make the tourniquet."

Adele caught him by the shoulders and spun him around to face her. "Are you a doctor or a butcher? To draw two more bowls of blood from him? He was nearly dead yesterday from loss of blood. Stop it, now I tell you. He was almost recovered and now he's-"

"Adele, Adele, what are you saying what is the matter?"

"Leave me alone Papa this man is an imbecile." she began to shake the doctor in her fury. He was small and plump with eyes like solid grapes, grey and watery. His tricorn had fell off and his wig followed. Pushing him aside she shouted, "Ester! Ester! For mercy's sake come."

Ester merely stood in the doorway of her mistress's room looking impassively as Adele at the furious doctor ad at the apprentice holding the bowl full of blood. Adele pushed her thumb into the wounded man's inner thigh, where Ester had shown her yesterday. The bleeding slackened and almost stopped. One a slow crimson welling up of blood. "Ester!" Torn between anger and terror and wanting to shout at the girl to threaten her and knowing that it would achieve nothing but humiliation to herself.

"He'll die," she said. The doctor was calling her name and crying that never in his professional life had he been so insulted to have a patient so endangered. That he would report her to the police the Section, the Commune, crying, "Murderess! Murderess!" While keeping away from her as possible.

"Send him away Papa before I strike him." Adele said. "Ester I beg you, you were right , we should have obeyed you, please you cant let him die like this."

Ester vanished but acme back carrying her bundle.

"I shall not stay to watch this blasphemy!" the doctor shouted. "If that man dies-when that man dies-you shall answer for it, it's murder. I shall report this to the Section that murder is being done under this roof."

Shut the creature up." Adele cried, "Or I shall not answer for my temper. Monsieur you have one minuet to be out of this room or I'll strike you down."

Mr Baltimore led the doctor away and the door slammed. "Aserythian idiots don't know the meaning of doctor."

"Give me patience! It was you who insisted that he be called-I'm going to be sick again. A basin for pity's sake, give me anything Papa I need to keep my thumb in place."

They had redid the bandages and cover at last. He looked as ghastly as if he was wounded a second time which in fact he was. Ester went to put her bundle back and when she came back Adele said, "You're a good girl," Loretta was watching them, she said something in Creole.

"No," Ester said, "Once is enough Madame. You didn't listen to me, I don't want to do that again. He'll live or die." she looked at Adele out of he corners of her dark eyes as she said it. Adele knew, for her benefit and not Loretta's. Her cousin came into the room with her cat slow languor ad indifference.

"I don't care," she said, "But he is a fine large man to be allowed to die so soon. Lalitte, my cocotte please give him a little proper medicine? He would give some woman a lot of joy of he was well again. Maybe even you eh, ma chere?"

Ester smiled contemptuously." I've my loa." she said, "I've the Legba so I don't need that." The two fell into Creole then as if Adele and her father didn't exist until Loretta said to her cousin, "Leave us alone for a little while. She will make him well, wont you matelotte? You see I do call you matelotte, as you're my best and dearest friend. I'm not ashamed to tell everyone. Matelotte, matelotte, matelotte you shall sleep beside me tonight in the same room like at home." then turning back to Adele and her uncle, "Now go Adele, uncle. Ester says that there is something that she has to do but wont do it with you here."

They left them to whatever it was that needed doing and again Adele remembered the green snake and knew that she was dreaming. "I dreamt last night that there was a snake lying on his chest," she said to her father as they went to his bedroom.

"That doctor!" she said while staring at the empty fireplace as though her dream was enacting itself there,

Her father sat on the bed and picked up one of his boots. "I told you, you shouldn't have brought this fellow in. That doctor creature will go to the police for sure. Why couldn't you have let him do his business like any ordinary girl?" The question was purely rhetorical and he said after a moment. "It's an extraordinary thing Adele, but the moment my sister Judith and her poor wretched husband and that spoilt girl with the dark haired creature of hers stepping out the coach . I knew that there was nothing but trouble. I said to myself-"

"Papa do you really he would go to the police?" she stood up pacing the room. It was too small for the length of her stride and nearly tripped over her father's outstretched feet. She stopped with her back to the curtains," Such a monstrous fool and to call us murders! I doubt any of his patients survived at all."

"For my fellow to call himself a valet!" Her father said, "Look at this boot! For heaven's sake child stop you're making me feel giddy looming over me like that. If you hadn't brought the fellow in the first place-"

"It did bring him in and if I hadn't he would be dead. Oh Papa think we must come up with a plan on what we should do."

"I tell you I should never had agreed to come here if I 'd known what it was like. I can scarcely bring myself to say it. I cant believe that I let you persuade me into bringing you here."

"Papa!"

"I thought of it as when I saw it with your mother when- when you were born only improved. No one told me that they would be killing each other in the streets and chasing their King out of his own home like a diseased rat. These damned estates of your cousin's! Why couldn't my brother in law see to his own family affairs himself instead of pretending to be dying and prancing around in his chateau in a dressing robe."

"Papa! You know that you wanted to come and you wanted me to come with you and now here we are."

"You wouldn't let me rest unless I promised to bring you along and instead of helping me you-"

"Oh Papa! What does it matter now who persuaded whom? We're here and that man is in there. If the police find him they'll want to take him away as-I don't know as what but they'll do it. Then he'll certainly die and they would want to arrest us as well. What shall we do? Ester said last night- I don't know how she could guess but she said that if we-"

"Your cousin spoils her until she's useless, she cant even make tea-"

"Papa put down the boot you're ruining it and listen to me. What are we going to do with him?" She begun striding up and down again kicking her father's other boot under the bed.

"You say its not like you though it would be! That woman with the axe! I shall not sleep again all my life without nightmares haunting me." she put her hands to her face against the window.

"We must hide him!" she said swinging around. "If-when the police come he must not be here. We can say- we can say that men-that some friends came and took him away, we don't know who they were or anything about them. We'll hide him upstairs, in one of the servant's rooms-no! There's an attic above those again! If we can-quick, quick Papa we can carry him up in the sheet each of us taking a corner, its the only way to save him." she felt almost as if a hand was pulling her towards the door, a voice was shouting to her, "It'll be too late! Too late in another moment!"

"Hide him for the police? Are you mad?"

"Papa do you want him to die? Do you want us to be arrested for sheltering him? They may come here at any moment, quick hurry, we've been wasting time."

"Where's my boot? What have you done with it?"

"What do your boots matter? Come with me now!" She dragged him up from the bed by the arm and brought him still protesting, "Quick Loretta, Ester we must hide him, and we must take him up into the attics and a mattress and blankets too-"

The man lay unconscious looking as if he was already dead. Loretta was looking into the mirror and playing with her hair while Ester was putting away her medicines. It was impossible to move the man up the stairs into the attic, his wound would open up again. Ester looked at Adele and looked away as if not wishing to let Adele read the mockery in her eyes.

"What else can we do?" Adele cried as she went to the window, opening it and leaned over the balcony. The street was busy with traffic again, people hurrying which was not like yesterday's singleness of purpose but as if they were frightened. A coach loaded with trunks, a cart, a man jumping down before the driver had pulled his horse to a stop. A short thickset man in a long blue coat and a tricolour sash a great red, white and blue cockade in his hat. Two ragged guardsmen with muskets and bayonets tumbling out behind him. The first man was already hammering at the street door shouting, "Open up! The Section, we're here from the Section, open up I say!"

"They're here!" Adele whispered, "For pity's sake what shall we do? Under the bed with him, Ester help me lift him quick Papa, Loretta, they're outside hurry take his feet gently. Loretta fetch your eiderdown, your pillows and lay down here," the two pushed the man under the bed as if he was a trunk, a roll pf carpet wrenching off the bloody sheets and bundling them after him. She had to run into Loretta's room herself and fetch armfuls of clothes and pillow spreading them out before pushing Loretta down and covering her. "Look ill, look as if you have fainted. Papa the door and answer it when they come. Listen to me, the man was taken away an hour ago immediately after the doctor left you understand? Two men came, he was not really badly hurt. They helped him to walk, two men in black. We know nothing about him. Leave all the talking to me. Loretta lie down! You always want to lie in bed now do it."

She could hear the sounds of the men on the stairs knocking and kicking the door. Her father's voice then a man shouting, "You're hiding a royalist assassin here. I know it, deliver him to me, I'm the Commissary Leonardo and I've an order from the Section to bring him to the Committee for questioning. You who are you? What is your name citizen?"

Her father shouting in answer or rather competition, "Dam sir you take your hands of me, tell those ruffians to stay outside, what the devil you mean by pushing in like a gang of cut throats. Take your hands off me I tell you before I knock you down."

"Papa Monsieur, citizen what is it you want?"

"We've come for the suspect Tala Valkov. I'm to bring him before the Committee of the Section. Stand aside, citizeness its useless to protest," A stout red faced man who looked as if he might be a butcher in private life.

"Protest?" Adele cried, "I do indeed protest monsieur. We're visitors, friends of Aserythe, of your revolution and we've been treated shamefully I say and I mean to protest to the Commune, to the Mayor." She was barring his way into the bedroom by simply standing in front of him. He stared up at her in astonishment, one fat and hairy hand raised to put her aside.

"Citizeness-"

"A wounded man one of the brave san-culottes who attacked the tyrant's palace yesterday came her to be succoured and he has been kidnapped monsieur. I fear he may be already dead, murdered. Heaven knows, is there no law in Aserythe?"

"What Madame? Citizeness? Kidnapped? The man-"

"Kidnapped! Abducted!" she struck and attitude that had great success in charades when she was playing with her friends back in Menos. "That poor brave man! Two villains armed with pistols took him an hour ago, my brave Papa risked his life to defend him but was struck down."

"Kidnapped?" the butcher shouted, "He was a royalist agent, where had he gone, who had taken him away? You monsieur citizen where has he gone? I demand to know, I don't believe you search the house!" Shouting contradiction at Mr Baltimore, at Adele, at his two helpers who had grounded their muskets and were staring about them as i they were expecting to begin. "I know he's here! Stand aside Madame I order you!"

He pushed by her into her bedroom where Ester was kneeling by the bed sponging Loretta's forehead with scented vinegar. Loretta was crying, genuine terror as tears rolled down her perfect skin. The butcher stopped shirt, taken back by the sight of a woman in bed where he had expected to find a wounded man or else by the sight of Ester or the feeling that he'd lost his prey.

He turned fiercely on Adele, "Where is he? What have you done with him?"

"What is he saying Adele? Damned their language, all jabbering that you cant understand. How dare he force his way into a lady's bedroom you scoundrel! These ruffians out, out, out of here! They stink like ferrets, out I say!" Mr Baltimore waved his arms in front of them and they retreated, clasping their muskets to their chests.

"Search the house!" the butcher roared, "Stand back monsieur we've a warrant from the Section if you interfere with us at your peril, search you imbeciles, that room there, in there and there! He cant be gone Doctor Lomonico said-"

Adele sat down in her dressing stool, not sure she could trust herself to stand upright much longer. Loretta still wept and only Ester seemed unconcerned. The two men with muskets searched Loretta's room and the small powder closet beyond it where Ester had her bed. They pushed their way into Mr Baltimore's room as he himself was threatening them with the ambassador, Mr Poopinmyer and even the King. The butcher stood over Loretta and stared down at her as if he wanted to tear back the bedclothes and indulge. She opened her drowned blue eyes to look at him and whimpered with fright. The butcher's left foot was actually pushed under the spilled corner of the eiderdown. It couldn't have been a hand's breadth from the hidden man. If the man moved groaned in his unconsciousness-he only had to cough from the dust under the bed.

_'I have to say something to get him out of this room._' Adele thought but the butcher was riveted where he stood by Loretta. She was in a negligee of rose chiffon and satin, her shoulders, bust and throat were almost bare like cream moulded into a woman's shape. Adele could see the man swallowing, one fat thick hand moved as if it was possessed before he brought it under control.

"What is the matter Madame? Mademoiselle?"

"I'm frightened," Loretta whispered, "What's happening?"

"The men who took him away, they frightened my poor mistress into hysterics. Will they murder him monsieur?" Ester said.

The butcher swallowed again seeming to be returning slowly to reality after looking into Loretta's eyes. "There were really two men? Someone came-?"

"I just told you that," Adele cried, "Monsieur if you want to search the entire house. there are garrets, attic, no doubt there are cellars. Why not look on top of the roof!"

"Citizeness I order you to be quiet! You are trying to prevent this poor creature telling me the truth." He looked down at the kneeling girl as if he meant to lift her up and free her from slavery there and then. "What happened? Tell me the whole truth. Have no fear the Committee of the Section will protect you as it protects all patriots. You've been a slave have you not?"

"I'm still a slave," Ester said, she seemed able to make her eyes enormous at will and to fill her expression with pathos.

"A slave still? You're free!" the butcher said, "Have they not told you?" He swung his thick body towards Adele as if he held her responsible. "There's no more slavery, citizeness! How dare you keep this poor girl in ignorance of her rights? Stand up child, you don't kneel to anyone," He grasped his tricoloured sash and pushed the end of it towards her. "Here is your warranty of Freedom! If you're ill treated come to me the Commissary Leonardo and I shall protect you. Now tell me what happened."

"There were two men monsieur tow men in black with pistols, we were so frightened of them. They carried him away, he could scarcely walk. Is he dead?"

I hope so and you let him be taken away! That murderer! That spy!" he had turned himself round again standing tiptoe to thrust hi face as close as possible to Mr Baltimore's. "You shall answer for it, you shall answer to the Section, to the Commune. This is not the end of the business monsieur, it's only the beginning." he pointed a stubby finger at Adele. "And if you ill treat that innocent girl for telling us the truth you shall answer for it."

"But she told you what I said in the beginning," Adele cried, "How could we know that he was a royalist, How could we turn away a wounded man?"

Out of the corner of her eye she could see a hand pushed out from under the hanging eiderdown. The man in the sash had only to look down to see the and. Ester moved her crimson satin skirts and came with a slow suppleness to her feet like a graceful yellow snake uncoiling itself. "Oh monsieur," she said grasping the Commissary's hand towards her lips but allowing it to stay a good inch or two. The Commissary flushed even darker red and freed himself as if he was too anxious for actual contact between the two.

He shouted at Mr Baltimore, "I shall make a report of his Aristocrats! Foreigners! If you touch one hair on that girl's head, I warm you." turning towards Ester. "You are free as I'm free remember it citizeness. Be a good patriot, denounce our enemies no matter who they may be." giving her a look full of threatening and meaning towards Adele and her father. "Come citizens." his men followed, the door banged and the stale smell of unwashed rags, garlic and sweat hung in the room.

Ester went into her mistress' room and fetched some of her perfume, she seemed to not mind as her maid sprayed it about. Adele stayed sitting on the stool before she realised that they should fetch the man from under the bed or he would suffocate. Ester placed the bottle back into Loretta's room as her mistress complained, "That man! Argh how he smelt! Are they gone?"

"I've never been so angry in my life!" Mr Baltimore shouted, "To come bursting in on us!" He had to struggle for breath, "And to call us foreigners and insult me in my own house!"

"To them we're foreigners and this isn't our house," she felt so tired it was difficult to think.

"We're Talmish, damned them," Mr Baltimore said as he went to the window as if he meant to shout something after the men."

"Help us to draw him out from under the bed Papa. He cant breathe."

Ester was already there and between them they brought him out into the air. He looked dreadful, his mouth open, his breath rasping and the bleeding had begun again.

"Get up!" Adele said to Loretta.

"You wanted me to lie down."

"And now I want you to get up! Cant you see the man is dying but you have never seen past yourself ever."

Loretta gave a wail of wretchedness at being so attacked, Ester took hold of her hands gently raising her up from the bed. "Ma pauvre petite ma poupee come, Lalitte will put you to bed in your own room, she'll make you a tisame, come take no notice of her," She whispered then in Creole and putting her arm around Loretta's yielding waist and lifting her out of the bed like a great white and gold Persian kitten.

"I shall kill her," Adele said between her teeth, "I swear before heaven , lift his legs gently Papa."

"We shall leave here tomorrow," Mr Baltimore said, "Tonight I wont spend another hour in this ruffian town, not for pension the place smells like a tavern. Your cousin's damnable scent are bad enough but-"

"Gently Papa! Ester please come quick! He's bleeding again!"

Ester came slowly looking at Adele at Mr Baltimore not quite smiling but the hint of it was there in the small lips. " How can we leave here? she said impatiently, "He cant be moved for days." she went to the window so as not to look at what Ester was doing and stared down at the street.

Suddenly Ester's voice called her away, "Madame Adele! Hold him down I must hurt him Hold him tight."

She held his wrists and he jerked his whole body upwards in such burst of strength that she needed to bear down with all force to hold him. He lay limp shuddering and staring at her with incomprehensible eyes while Ester bandaged him.

"Will they-come back?" Adele whispered as she couldn't prevent herself saying.

"Not for a time," Ester said.

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**lol people I really couldn't resist making a bit a joke but seriously if you (the reader) aren't at least fifteen don't read trust me it kind gets a little graphical if you know what I mean. Thanks.**

**read and review**

**bye**

**ikl wings**


	4. Chapter 3

**This story is kinda for the more mature people so that's the reason for the rating though if younger readers under fifteen get the wrong idea I advise not to read this story as I'm not help responsible for any grounding from parents.**

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_**evening or whenever you read this story **_

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Chapter 3**

The nursing fell to Adele or almost all of it, Ester helped her wash him and so such things as needed two women or she sat with him while Adele dined downstairs with her father and Loretta, listening to stories of King Robert and of Loretta's great grandmother and of the grandeur of the de Martinique lineage and their connection with noble families.

Once or twice Loretta came to sit beside the bed holding the man's hand and contriving to look as though it was she who had saved his life but for most of the hours of the day and night it was Adele who sat with him or slept on the pallet laid in front of the fireplace ready when he threw off the blankets and then lay shivering in fever.

The men from the Section didn't come back and the streets were quieter, or at least there was no fighting. They heard of arrests from Margareet and Adele herself when they walked around the streets. There were soldiers everywhere, columns of men marching towards the eastern barriers. The people in the streets had become more insolent to anyone who seemed rich or well dressed. Once they saw a priest being arrested ad taken to the Section. A mob gathered around the small squad of tatterdemalion soldiers taking from his house. "A bas les caltotins! Vaoila un jean fourtre! A la lanterne!" they didn't stop at verbal abuse and a scene like that wasn't easy to watch even for foreigner or any decent person.

Mr Baltimore still spoke of leaving for Fresemme at once or at least tomorrow or the next but that is a problem with the wounded man. Adele would have would agreed to leave if they could obtain passports, horses on short notice but that the man was still hurt and they didn't know a safe place to take him. It began to seem to Adele that she had been nursing him forever. To her it was the most natural thing in the world to lift his naked body wash and dry it, change the linen, hold the head in the crook of her arm to feed him with broth. As she sat watching him sleep she began to feel that she knew him than anyone in her life, even more than her father yet she knew of him was his name. Tala Valkov. He told them that he was connected with Count de Martinique, Loretta's great uncle. Here and there he talked in his fever and she gathered snippets of details and guessed more details. He spoke of how he had been a soldier and fought in Kirovia. He also mentioned a Colonel Aracand, of a gang called 'Blitzkrieg' and a few names that he murmured a couple of times. The second night he twisted and tried to crawl out of the bed, Adele realised that in his state he thought that it was men he was hunting, the red coats.

She held him down while be cursed in every language that he knew and she couldn't recognise a syllable. His eyes burning in the candlelight, mad with fever and then like grey glass as though blind with weakness, this scared Adele into thinking that he was dying for sure. Se still didn't like him and there wasn't anything about him that was likeable beside his helplessness. A man doesn't change his character just from being ill and yet there was a sense of more than pleasure in nursing him. A kind of triumph in having such control, over a man who had so clearly disliked her at first sight. He had seemed to be a man who showed little respect for women except to use them. She wondered how he'd feel when he was well enough to realise what had happened

The moment came in the early hours of the 4th day about two o'clock, she heard him moving, woke out of her light sleep and lifted the candlestick to see what he was doing. He looked around him, at her with his bewildered yet clear of fever blue eyes.

"Where the devil and I?" he said, trying to get up after clenching his teeth against the pain of his leg as he moved, "Madame! What are you-where is this?" staring around, at her again as she had lain down in her shift as her blue hair was loose on her shoulders. She felt for her nightgown and pulled it around her, "Lie down." she said, "You must try not to move."

"How long have I been here?"

"Three days, almost four now."

He lay back onto the pillow, "And the King?"

"You must not talk."

He sat up again then grunted at the pain and propped himself on one arm. "Tell me!"

"They've taken him to another palace called the Temple, he's no longer King at leat that's what I've heard. Lie down or your wound will break open, you almost died and please do as I say or you will." His face was sheathed in seat already, silvery in the candlelight. He had to submit for he was weak then started to curse under his breath as the fever seemed to be returning.

"Don't tire yourself."

"And you've been nursing me?"

"All of us."

"How did I come here? This is your lodging, Madame de Martinique's home?"

"Yes, you just came here after being in a fight and shot in the leg."

"I know."

She began to sponge his face, as he was sodden with sweat. Adele lifted the covers away to sponge and dry his body. He tried to prevent her, "Stop it girl! What are you doing? I-"

"You have to be kept clean," she said, "Do you think that I haven't done this already?"

He turned his head away from her.

"I must lift you up," she put her arm under his shoulders, it was an extraordinary thing. She had done this a dozen, twenty times while he was unconscious yet not she found herself flushing and her face burning. His naked body against her arm, his head fallen back as something between horror and despair in his eyes then something else. As if he'd never seen her before, astonishment as she knelt by the bed holding him. The hair falling forward onto his chest, a sky blue gentleness against the white, the candlelight throwing shadows, brightness that glistened his eyes, her hair and the gold bracelet on her arm. The paleness of his body and then the slightly tanned where he was sun burned. Her own arm as though it had been dusted with gold like pollen. His hair like crimson blood, the liquid under the skin. They looked at each other as if he was child-her lover. Like a shock or touching fire or the numbness of ice. The words that she had never would enter her mind, her lover! The numbing sense of burning, her face, her mind, flowing through her as if her entire body was turning scarlet.

She must move, do something, go on drying him, lay him down and cover him her mind said but she couldn't move. Her heart wanted-yearned for her to put her head down until her hair covered both them like a curtain. She did lower her head a little as the strands of blue slippery like water laid spread out over his chest, a heavy mass of it. It spilt down his side.

'Am I mad' she thought but couldn't do anything, couldn't draw back or control her mind. Her mouth so close to his that she could feel his breath.

She heard him moving, his hand moving. His arm behind her neck. Pulling her down until their mouths were touching, his dry with fever, parched dry and burning for something to quench them. What are you doing? What is happening? The questions made no sound, made no sense. She held him against her as if by her own strength she could heal him, the numb sense of burning and warmth.

She was no longer kissing him, he whimpered in her mouth, "Lie down with me. I'll die of it but lie down with me now please." His hands at her shift as she didn't know what he was doing. Then his body shivered, grew rigid, he made a furious sound of agony between his clenched teeth and lay slack barely conscious in her arms. The red haired head had fallen sideways from her; sweat was running like water on his throat and his back so that he was soaked with it. She looked at him for a moment of disbelief and very slowly put her mouth against the crook of his neck. The taste of salt lingered there cold and damp.

A sudden thought appeared in her mind, "He's dying! What have I done what happened?" she began to cry out for Ester while getting up. "Ester!" she let go of him to run for help as the girl appeared in the doorway yawning as he had rolled out of her bed or Loretta's. "Help me he's dying I've killed him."

The girl came and knelt beside her and peeled back the last of the covering from his legs, blood. The golden hands on the skin touching feeling lying still.

"What have you done Madame?" the eyes huge in knowing.

"Nothing! I lifted him up and-and-nothing! What do you mean?"

Ester clicked her tongue. "If you do that again he'll die for sure," she laughed a low whispering full of laughter and malice.

"Do what? What do you mean?"

"Make love to him Madame."

"Make-love?" staring at the girl with her dark eyes full of knowledge. "Are you mad? they knelt looking at one another; Adele was too astonished and frightened at what happened to be angry. Ester's expression changed from cruel amusement to a slow incredulity.

"You don't know?" Ester said at last, "You don't know anything." Astonishment, something close to pity, contempt and again pity in her eyes. Kneeling close to naked and the unconscious man naked in the bed. She felt that of the three of them it was she was indecent even her breast burned crimson.

"I-I know everything," she whispered, "Everything," she didn't know why she said it then thought of the hens and the cock in the stable yard at home. Of the bull covering a cow in the field beyond the orchard. Two farm boys with dairymaids in the dairy breathless with laughter and then running away when they realised that she was there. "I know everything." she said again, "But-" What had that to do with this, with-with holding his head to-she felt the taste of salt sweat on her mouth and tried to remember what had happened. Nothing! Love? Making love?

"You're mad! Wicked! How can you be so evil?"

Ester reached out and took her wrist, the long fingers cold. Drawing her hand forward laying it palm upwards in Ester's lap. "Hold the candle nearer," she said and without knowing that she was doing it Adele obeyed.

"Loh! Loh! She has so much love to burn a man to ashes. Oh Madame! Killing! You'll kill more men than this one. You won't kill him; he's too strong but others! Oh oh here is the path of darkness. So much death Madame."

Lifting her eyes to Adele's for the first time something near to respect in them. "Now I'll bring him back to you." She held Adele's knuckles against her breast for a moment against the ribs of her heart. Adele could feel the beating of it which stayed with her when Ester let her hand go. It stayed and seemed to become part of her heartbeat.

She wanted to ask what the girl meant but she couldn't make herself say anything. Ester went back to sleep as Adele knelt up looking at the man. I don't even like him. Making love? As if the girl had emptied filth on her, why? She no longer wanted to touch him as if she had to lift him again she wouldn't be able to look at him while she did it. What did he say to her? She couldn't remember had he only been whispering in fever? She put her hand against his forehead it was burning, his hands were burning, his chest every part of him everytime she touched him. She must cover him up; she touched his leg below the wound, above it.

'_So much love to burn a man to ashes_' the girl should be whipped. Suddenly she out her hands over her eyes. _To ashes_. What is in me? I must be mad myself. The two farm boy in the dairy. They had had the girl bent over the milk tub and-no no! Boys playing a brutal game. Animals. And I? The cock jumping on the clucking hen treading her down, beating his coloured wing in triumph. No! I lifted him up nothing else! Love is-what is love?

"I love you," Cousin Kenny had said once. When they were ten years old, before she had begun to grow so tall to tower over him and over most boys around her age. Love was-to be married to be a mother to nurse children; to-she had put all thought of it away long ago, years ago. She was too tall, too strong and too intelligent. To submit herself to someone like Cousin Kenny! Or any of his friends or the young men in Menos, or the neighbour's sons. It had never been thinkable, they all wanted wives like Loretta and she wanted-.

She wanted to be a man. She touched the place where they had cut his chin. The bristles rasped her fingertips; did he just look at her? She turned his head towards her opened his eyelid with her finger, "Lie down beside me," he had said and then? She had a savage temptation to do it to see ho it might feel. To lie beside a man naked. I'm going totally mad so mad that it no longer mattered like a dream like something for which one has no responsibility at all. She laid her hand against his heart; the girl's heart now his, how hard it beat. Like knocking at a door, his breathing was so feebly that she could scarcely hear him. _You won't kill him, he's too strong_.

'But I nearly did' she thought and instead of terror there was something like astonished pride in thinking it. She had a momentary remembrance of that woman lifting her axe. The woman had been young, her arms bare to the shoulders already stained with blood. Adele imagined herself as that woman and she knew how the feeling took over her body in a shriek of triumph. _So much death._

Her green eyes shut looking into the dark.

Ester came back with a tumble of smoky milky acrid smelling liquid, "Hold his head Madame."

They gave him the drink and it was as though he belonged to her, completely hers. To heal, to-he lay against her shoulder, swallowing the liquid and muttering something while his blue eyes were hidden under some of the fallen red hair. She held him like a possession as if someone was threatening to take him away from her. Still in that curious suspended state of mind in which she wasn't responsible for her thoughts, she could let them take their own path drifting like clouds in the wind. The fact that she knew nothing about him that he'd not seemed to like her when they met made no difference or rather added to the sense of possession. Like catching a wild animal in a trap, and it twists its way that the only binds the wire tighter until eventually it strangles itself.

Ester looked at her and nodded as her eyes were saying, "Yes, yes Madame he's yours, only yours now." She drew up the covers over him while Adele still knelt supporting his head.

"You must let him rest," Ester said as she smiled with her white teeth. Adele laid him down reluctantly and went to her own mattress by the fire. Ester knelt and covered up as though she'd decided be a friend to Adele. She returned to Loretta's room as Adele lay awake listening to his shallow breathing and occasional whimpering.

_'I shall be-I shall be myself again,'_ she shivered a long shivering from shoulders to feet.

'_So much love'_

What does that mean? I was impossible, it had no meaning. Cousin Kenny listening to Miss Silvestri sing and swearing that she sung like an angel, that was love or he was tone deaf. She laid her hand flat against her heart under her breast. Love? The way the bull roared, the cock flapped its wings? Its I who should be whipped, whipped at a cart's tail. She put her hand over her eyes and the palms were burning.

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He began to be able to sit up to talk although it tired him to talk much for the first day or so but he wanted her to talk to him while he listened, watching her attentively a complex of interests behind his eyes. Neither of them spoke about what had happened as she herself believed at time that nothing at all happened. He had a crisis in the illness and she brought him through it and now he was mending at last. He asked what the soldier said to her the day of the Assembly, the day of the fighting.

"Are all the women in your country tall as you?" she repeated from memory.

"Are they?" he asked while watching the dancing green eyes.

"Of course not."

"Are you a horsewoman?"

"Yes," she began to tell him about Haru who was descended from the Godophin on his dam's side. She mentioned the stables, the dogs, Bayard Downs and fencing with Kenny. "He isn't much of a good fencer, he's going to be a clergyman, but at least he's someone. Miguel whose now in the Life Guards can only fence with a sabre," she held out her fist and turned it for a cut.

"You can use a sabre?"

"Oh yes, I'm better with it really than a foil because poor Kenny is almost useless, He doesn't like to fence with me now, he say's its immoral for a woman to fence but that's because he always loses."

She got up and found a poker holding it en garde. Slowly extended her arm until the point of the iron was aimed at his chest. Sliding her right foot forward and very slowly right knee bent until she was at full lunge and the tip of the poker touched his shirt. Adele altered her fist to a sabre grip and cut to his right cheek and then to his left touching each time. He didn't move as his eyes watched her in amusement, admiration nor was there something else in them.

He took hold of the poker and drew it and her towards him. "Do you want to kill your patient?"

She didn't answer as she let go of the brass handle and knelt beside the bed. "I must make you comfortable," she said but didn't alter the pillows. He laid down the brass and iron poker on the bed like a sword between them.

"I must thank your father for letting you nurse me, I owe him a debt and you a greater one."

"It was Ester who saved you."

"I must go as soon as it's possible; I've brought you all into danger."

"The danger is gone, if there was any. You must let yourself get well first."

He looked at his hands lying on the covers. The had turned extremely pale as though he was an albino, his well shaped hands; the bones long and straight. She wondered what and who he was, apart from having been a soldier and whether Valkov was his real name but the most she wanted to touch him. In a moment she would lift him up from the pillows to rearrange them. Hold his head against her shoulder; it was the most natural thing to her to do. The wickedness of that girl to try and make out that it was-she found herself begin to burn.

He was looking at her and the flush grew darker scarlet which made her furious with him. "What are you smiling at? Do you think it's amusing to have me kneel down to make a man's bed for him?"

He stopped smiling, "Do you look like that at Cousin Kenny?"

"What do you mean?"

"No wonder he loses poor devil," he took her hand and closed it into a fist, gently touching the sinews on the insides of her wrist with his fingertips. "Maybe one day you and I'll fence together. Although I'm better with a gun than a sabre."

"I must make your bed."

She was making it when her father came in to bring her for a walk with him.

"That damned fellow," Mr Baltimore said when they were out of the house, "How can you stomach puffing his pillow and-and whatever you do for him Why the deuce don't you leave it to Loretta's girl? And sleeping in the same room! What would anyone say if they knew of it at home?"

"But they won't know Papa, and suppose he should be taken ill in the night again? I told you he almost died the other night; he was so weak that-"

"Your mother would have a fit if she knew."

"Then she would leave everything exactly as it is, as she always does."

"You ignore all she says as you do with me. We shall have you married when we're home again and then you may torment the poor wretch and leave me to grow old in peace. You're twenty, Adele, its high time you were settled in like. I've meant to say this to you before. Good heavens! Look at that villain over there did you ever see such a face? No, we must have you settled Adele, with a nursery full of babies which will give you better things to think of instead of taking a wounded assassin into our home. Farmer Tate was saying to me only the day we left that he was sure you'd break your neck. Get away from me curse you."

They had begun to be surrounded by a small crowd, "We'd best get back Papa. Citizens, we're visitors, we wish you every good fortune, let us by please."

"Unwashed scoundrels."

Something else distracted the crowd's attention, and it began running down the street after a loaded coach shouting, "Stop the horses, stop them search inside!"

They turned back, Adele was trying to make her father hurry as she wasn't afraid for herself but a sudden fear that the men from the Section might come again and were already there. "We must hide him in the loft," she said. "We can't leave him where he is."

"Damnation, you race along as if you were on horseback. I wont hurry for these devils, as for that fellow surely he has some friends in Ishe who can look after him? I should like to leave here as soon as we get word again from old de Martinique. Even in these times he must have got my new letter by now to tell us to go back to Talmond. If he doesn't answer we shall simply go to him and make him so what's necessary. We should have gone already but this Valkov fellow of yours."

"He's not mine Papa. Oh please hurry! I shouldn't have left him."

Luckily nothing had happened and the only news that Margareet gave them at dinner was worse than ever. Of more arrests, of stories of plots to burn the city, to murder the government, to murder everyone. Rumours full of an old woman's terror and nonsense but behind them was an atmosphere that Adele had felt like there was a new storm gathering. Old Madame de Martinique trembled at every word her servant repeated as she clung to her rosary beads even while eating. It made the meal uncomfortable for Adele as she was on edge throughout it, waiting for the moment she could carry out her plan for bringing Monsieur Valkov up to the loft.

It took a good hour to manage it and when it was done he lay on the pallet bed so spent with the effort that she was afraid again that she killed him. While her father was not there she brought a mattress up for herself and laid it wit pillows and covers in a corner of the loft. Until at last she was alone with him, supper finished and her father gone to bed, the house was totally quiet as the candlelight threw unfamiliar shadows. The stool they had brought up with a china wash basin and ewer were set on the floor just in case they were needed.

The man lay asleep as the blue haired lady made herself comfortable on her mattress watching him. The shadows moving slightly on his face, around his mouth as he inhaled and exhaled. The candle flame bent forwards in a stirring of the dusty stifling air under the roof.

_'High time you were settled in life in a nursery full of babies. Oh no no, I've not come t__his far as this.'_ she thought, _'To go home and marry cousin Kenny which was actually what her father meant for the past five years.'_

"You're a handsome lady Adele," he had said long ago, "I'm your father but even I can see that you'd make a splendid mother for your children but I've to be frank with you my dear, your mother can't say it so I must. You frighten men out of their wits. I thought you might make a hint of it with Raul Farifeather, but he took off like a hare at the very hint of it. It was bad enough that you're barely six foot tall and you're scarce fifteen and not yet finished growing, but the way you behave!"

"But you're six feet tall Papa why shouldn't I?"

"Because you're a girl of course! A man doesn't want a wife like a grenadier! You must make them think that you're smaller than you are damn it, that you're tender and weak like every other woman. What do you do but go and lift Raul up in your arms to show him how strong you are then offer to wrestle him for dibs on the extra piece of apple pie. Good grief child I doubt that he's stopped running yet."

"I don't mean to marry anyone and certainly not Raul."

"You don't know what you're saying Adele, of course you'll marry. Now if you were to marry Kenny-"

"Cousin Kenny! Papa are you mad?"

"It would keep the estate together and he has a great admiration for you so has your uncle."

"Papa!" She had known that it was her mother's wish and not her father's so that she would be out of the house and out of the way. She tried to rid the thought before it took full shape but it was impossible. Her mother never like her and these last years Adele noticed it more and more. Papa she would have been glad enough herself to leave and be free of that cold and irritable dislike that always seemed to lie below the surface of all the conventional show of affection between her mother and herself. It was a thought that had come back to her again and again since that conversation. Oh how pleasant to become her own mistress except the price seemed extremely high. To marry Kenny! Or someone like him, to watch him as-as he lay in bed like-like this? Naked? To-hold him? She went and knelt close to the other bed and lifted the candle, in all their lives together, in their childhood, she had never seen Cousin Kenny naked. What did he look like without clothes? Not like this man definitely. He would be thin and flat chest with bony knees and spindly legs. Did that matter? Was love anything to do with-the way flesh is shaped? A body?

For men yes. A woman must be-her face-and but for a woman? Papa was handsome, had that matter to Mama? How could one know? Who would one ask? Adele thought of Ester, her face, her smile then knew the answer as if she had been thinking as Ester was there speaking. Adele wanted to pull back the covers and touch him. Oh how beautiful his body was, she hadn't thought of that before and not in those words as having anything to do with men. The depth and breadth of his chest, the long flat curving muscles of his legs, his long and narrow feet. She won't touch the covers. Won't touch him. Only like thinking of a statue, of a picture. His face? That wasn't beautiful at all except in the way that a savage, a weapon might be. The blade of a sabre, the way the hilt fits the hand. The blue haired woman closed her fist, cut to the left, cut to the right parry, cut low.

What is in me? What is it? Feeling a sensation of trembling, the shivering of her body, and her hand with its own life taking hold of the covers. Had Mama felt this? Ever? For Papa? She buried her forehead in the quilt, clenched the silk between her teeth until her jaws hurt. I won't touch him, I won't, and I won't look at him.

Downstairs there were sounds, a brutality of noise far down in the house by the street door. She heard it for a second without moving, without knowing what she had heard. They had come back! She was right they'd come back for him and were searching everywhere. She must go down, be there, be in bed, seemed to have been-Papa-the ladder, the ladder up her to the loft.

She knelt again and shook him whispering. "Wake up wake up you must help me to help you, there are men coming to search."

His eyes open clouded with the drug Ester had given him an hour ago.

"I must go down to them and you must take the ladder up and try to lift it in here. I shall push it up to you and you must reset the trapdoor. Understand?"

"Yes."

Adele climbed down and pushed the loose wooden ladder up into the dark loft. "Put out the candle."

Downstairs the crash of musket butts and the sounds of as troop of men, how many? They were already crowding, pushing and hammering their way into the apartment. Ten, twenty men, Ester opening the door to them, Mr Baltimore shouting protesting while holding his candlestick. The Commissary and three others in sashes. The sour smell of dirty wool, dirtier boots and sabots lingered in the room. Their eyes widened as they saw her.

"Where have you been citizeness?"

"How can you ask such a question to a woman in the middle of the night?" Heaven's mercy her bed there would be no sign of its being slept in. She forced her way past the Commissary and his three colleges and half a dozen of the soldier. "What is it you want messieurs? Citizens? I told you we knew nothing of that man."

In her room and the bed was tossed the covers thrown aside and the pillow dented. Adele saw Ester through the doorway, behind her the Commissary was shouting, "Search the apartment. All papers, all books. Citizeness don't attempt to hide anything. Monsieur you'll make a statement for me, you'll answer every question truthfully or it will be worse for you."

"What statement? What questions? My father doesn't speak any language other than Talmish, so he can't answer you." Two soldiers dragged her bed aside while another pulled out the draws of her dressing table scattering the contents finding two letters seizing them.

"Papers, citizen Commissary! Papers!"

"Give them to me!"

"They're from my cousin. What do you want here, are you mad?"

Loretta was screaming, "You're ruining my gowns, don't touch them, you filthy wretches, get out of my bedroom. Ester! Adele! Help!"

"In the name of the Section I order you to allow the search citizeness. We don't want to use violence."

A dozen voices shouting as Mr Baltimore tried to defend hi mahogany travelling chest. "The keys monsieur! Your only hope is to confess everything. Sergent break open that box." The splintering of wood, a scream of fury from Mr Baltimore, a man staggered as Mr Baltimore flung him back from his beloved treasures of silver brushes, pomade, writing case and men's jewellery and whatever else he kept in there. Hands gasping the papers from the writing case in triumph.

"Citizen you must come with us to the Section. Bring the papers Sergent and those books there'll be a code in them. I warned you to come so come with us of your own accord citizen or you'll be brought by force."

"You can't! Papa! They want to take you away. No!" standing in between the soldiers and her father.

"Citizeness, stand aside I warn you!"

A soldier stepped forward to put her out of the way and she hit him with all her strength. He fell as if he had been hit with a musket butt. Four men grabbed her arms forcing her against the wall.

"Come citizens we don't need to use violence against women. Tell the citizeness to control herself or we must bring her with us."

"He can't understand your language. I tell you what do you want wit him?"

"We suspect Monsieur Baltimore of being and enemy of the people an agent of the Talmish government and the émigré army. Your coat monsieur and your hat unless you wish to go bareheaded."

Nightmare, it couldn't happen, a flood of men pouring down the marble stairs into the hall with her father almost" carried by them.

A crowd gathered even at this hour of the night. What time was it? One in the morning? Two? Men women pushing shouting, "A plotter they've caught a plotter! One of the murderers!"

"It's a priest, a catolin, filthy jean foutre!"

"A plotter, one of the assassins."

She was still in her shift and nightgown, slippers running after the soldiers as if she were a madwoman crying, "Papa, Papa!"

The soldiers themselves were shouting, "Make way, he's dangerous, look at the animal, he's going to murder us all, he was going to murder Patriot Pierre, the Patriot Cruesole we've caught one of the nest rats."

A building, stairs, office, men shouting. She had to translate without knowing what she was saying. They wanted her father to sign a paper.

"I'll sign nothing damned their eyes! Monsters! Rights of man! They should be hanged, go home Adele. Go to the embassy tomorrow and we shall have these villains set to their rightabout. I shall have you all hanged for this abomination. They broke my box! Go back to bed Adele, you're in your nightgown for heaven's sake what will people think? At least cover your chest."

Looking down at himself, "What will they think of me?"

A man with a sneering face behind the long table shuffling his papers, while the other men were grey faced with exhaustion. "Take him to the commune, Commissary guard him well."

More nightmares of the streets and crossing the river was a task. A small room crammed with men ser shouting as her father's box of papers were handed though and tossed like an ark on the waves. There were men in tricoloured sashes or more like rags hoarse with shouting and stinking of stale sweat.

Downstairs again and another building and someone was saying, "The Mairie, the depot, the Citizen Cruesole will question him."

Sudden quiet as five men behind the table better dressed but the same stale sir of sleepiness exhausted hatred. The man in the centre of the five with greasy purple hair, bloodshot eyes and a thin nose and mouth.

"This is the accused?" he said in a heavily accented voice.

"We've heard a lot about you. You'd better confess at once or it will be the guillotine."

"The guillotine? Are you mad? Upon my soul you look it but I demand that you send word to my ambassador. I'm a Talmish gentlemen, a visitor her damn my stupidity for coming into your damned country. My daughter had been brutally handled by your ruffians and by box is broken-."

A soldier emptied an armful of the papers into the table which most of them were about Loretta's estated that were to come to her from her father's mother's family. Letters from her father when they were in Nalalia, from the count, lawyers tenants notaries. The five men behind the table reached and looked at the documents they wanted to broadcast as it they knew what documents they wanted. The man in the centre read in the list that had been fastened to the bundle. _'Papers concerning Limouisniere estate near Mevant and items, maps for the farmlands and the manors and their-'_

"Maps!" One of the other men sprang to his feet." Who sent you here? What had been giving you your orders? Citizen Doctor, I demand that the woman he calls his daughter be arrested also. And the whole nest of ci-devants in that house. The woman de Martinique why was she not brought here?"

"Patience, citizen, we shall have them all in good time. Sign this." He pushed a document across the littered table with a pen and ink. "Do you claim you can't understand our language? This is the process-verbal saying that you have been arrested and why and your documents seized and that you understand."

"He doesn't understand!"

"Be quiet citizeness." His cold eyes not meeting hers and then when they did seeming quiet mad and yet he was quieter than the others almost polite.

Her fathers was brought away down the corridors through a stable yard and up stairs to a second storey as six men were bringing him up to what was a loft. It was six in the morning and there were jailers, ragged soldiers a woman and covered basket. Crying, "They wont let me even speak to him and my master has had nothing to eat since three days ago."

The door grinded to a halt as a sudden stench from beyond rushed out; there was darkness as voices of men waking from sleep growled in alarm.

In her distress Adele shouted after her father before he was out if sight, "Papa, papa come back! He's innocent you wretches!"

The woman was at her elbow tugging her sleeve. "Speak to them for me Madame tell them he has had nothing to eat. He'll starve they give him nothing."

She scarcely knew what the woman said as soldiers ordered them both down the stairs into the stable yard. When they were in the street the lady screamed, "Ys I'm an aristocrat imprison me too! I've been a servant all my life the servant of an aristocrat of good people. Kill me for it but I shall not deny it." She sat down with her basket weeping by the gate.

'_I should comfort her'_ Adele thought but when the blue haired woman sat down to ask her what one must do, she refused to talk to anyone.

Sighing she began walking him the way they had come as people stared at her and called and jeered at her appearance. In all the time she hadn't thought to tell them where the man was, that he was hidden under the roof. It wouldn't have helped to betrayed him as they would probably kill her father anyway. Though as she reached the door she wondered whether she should have.

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**Read and review people**

**Bye **

**ikl wings **


	5. Chapter 4

**Well people I know that it gets a little mushy in places but like I said it will be worse and kinda graphical so if you're under 15 bug off… not really but read another story in the mean time.**

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Chapter 4**

She didn't know whether it was the day or nights that were the worst. At night, she lay sleepless trying to think of a plan. Plan what? Think of what? By day haunting the courtyard, the streets outside where he was held. Each day she brought food for him, clean shirts and talking to him a moment though the thickness of the timber door until she was forced away by the guards.

Then the search for someone, someone who could help. Adele got in the carriage, went on foot, knocking at doors, then sitting in waiting rooms and staring up in hope that each time a door opened there would be someone who could help her. No such hope so it was home and the embassy repeatedly and every time the excuse was _'His Excellency is engaged, out in the countryside busy with affairs,'_ which one could possibly be playing with a puppy in the garden. She saw him from the window and ran down calling "my lord, my lord!" but he was gone. The chief of secretary passed her onto a junior who passed her onto an assistant who was a young man with a stammer who passed her onto an elderly clerk, until no one would receive her.

"My dear Madame." the secretary said at that first interview eyeing her from the calmness of his safe diplomat's splendour of his office. "My dear Madame I'll advise for you to come to Ishe at such a time. I assure you, if your father is innocent as I'm sure he is, he'll convince the fairest hearings. We're in constant touch with the authorities and his Excellency will make every representation." while his cold handsome eyes said clearer than his drawl, "Your father must be a real tom Paine sort of rascal to have come here at all and jolly well served him right."

"We didn't know what it would be like!" she cried in her answering his accusing look rather than his words. "We thought-I thought-"

"Please, Madame don't upset yourself. Joseph! Joseph! Please conduct Miss Baltimore somewhere where she may compose herself maybe call on one of the maids."

By the fifth or sixth visit no one would see her except the usher who kept telling her that Lord Gary sent word that 'everything possible was being done and than he begged her not to inconvenience herself by coming again tot the embassy, _'that everything is being done that is possible.'_

Haunting the Palais-Royal, the Hotel de Ville and crying out after members of the Commune one was recognised. "Monsieur Citizen Michael! Citizen Pierre! Listen to me, please I've a petition!" Many times she forced herself through the crowd towards them as they looked angered, astonished or in fear at seeing a woman that tall. She was pretty much a giant in their eyes and that didn't help her cause as they would always walk away. Many times she was threatened and nearly arrested as being a madwoman disturbing the peace.

It was Doctor Cruesole who released her after finding her in the centre of an uproar in one of the stone corridors throwing every soldier attempting to detain her.

"I know her," Doctor Cruesole said, "Leave her alone, go home citizeness your father's case is receiving attention. Look after yourself, please get some sleep and come see me tomorrow." His eyes on her body as she backed away from him and the soldiers who had been arresting her then ran for home.

The next day she did go to the Mairie to look for him but he was no where to be found. An old usher to whom she told her case took pity on her, "Mademoiselle," he whispered having glanced around to see that no one overheard, "Don't come back here. He won't help you. He promises you everything but he'll do nothing. Pray for your father because there is nothing more that can be done."

The days were spent like that and at night sleepless. She no longer needed to sleep in the loft where the man was hidden and Loretta threatened hysterics if Adele wasn't in the room adjacent to hers at night. Sometimes she thought about who she was in about two maybe three months, probably a mad lunatic shouting, "Rights of man! Liberty! Equality! Fraternity" then being locked up and hanged.

Oh why did she tell her father that if they went to Aserythe they might stay in Ishe and learn what true freedom looked like. They would see the king and the queen, true they did see them but only when they were kicked out of their home to be executed.

_'Oh Papa my poor Papa stupid, patient, kind Papa. Why did you listen to me? Why did we come at all? For that stupid weeping bitch and her damnable estates and to get away from Mama. If we must have come why didn't we not go straight there, to Nalalia and wherever else it was to do Loretta's business for her at once? Why why why? Papa you're probably lying awake in the stinking darkness asking himself the same questions.'_ Adele thought. _'I will never contradict you as long as I live. I'll make you comfortable and look after you. No matter how unpleasant mama is. I shall devote my life to obeying you and never let her torment you ever again. I'll kill her if she makes one complaint about you. I believe in you now and forever. I shall go to church and never make fun of clergymen. I shall make Cousin Kenny take his vows I swear.'_

Why did we come here, I was mad, I was raving mad. What will happen? They can't punish him for what? And the rumours especially what the women whisper, "They mean to kill them I hear it I hear it in the Section. I heard it from someone who knows someone in the Commune and usher he said-"

The news of the war and the men going to the frontier. "They're afraid of the prisoners breaking out of the jails with all the men gone to fight. They're going to kill them before they can escape and kill all the deputies, that's what I heard."

Mad women talking and whispering, demented for wanting their imprisoned men. A haunted comradeship of terror and the same faces everyday, the same baskets. Only the rumours new of the Mixerians, the princes, the prince of Darais, the Duke of Selasia were coming, to save us, they were coming to murder us; they would burn Ishe or was it that they were coming to save the King and Queen. There was no more King, there was a republic. They were going to try the King and send him out of the country. The rumours were muddled and one didn't know the true message.

Tomorrow all the prisoners would be freed, there would be amnesty. The Duke of Selasia demanded everyone be freed or he would destroy Ishe. His army was advancing and he would be there in a week. All the prisoners would be killed if he came too close.

Her father's voice through the door had grown hoarse and unfamiliar in the bad air. As if he was too ill to be angry and I he had shouted at her it would be only to blame her.

"Papa, it's my fault, my wickedness, oh Papa, can you forgive me?"

"The people in here, they're-they're all gentlemen," he said in that lost wondering voice that had become his. "Some of them speak Talmish but I don't understand anything that had happened. There's a priest here who's 84 years old."

"I've brought you wine Papa and roast meat, some peaches and some bread." she couldn't stop herself from crying, "I'm meeting someone this afternoon who promises me he can bring a petition in front of the Citizen Marcello, they say he has a great deal of power."

"The Citizen Marcello? Have you not seen Lord Gary yet the ambassador?"

"I've tried Papa I swear it, I'll have to try again tomorrow but thus man he says that he knows and old in Citizen's Marcello's house and she'll give him a letter I've written."

"If only you could manage to see Lord Gary. I can't understand why you haven't-."

"They say that they're doing all they can but this old servant of Citizen Marcello she is supposed to be very kind and to have helped-"

Another woman was forcing her way from the door crying out, "Monsieur l'abbe, its Blanchet. I've brought you your dinner!"

At night when she couldn't bear it any longer to be alone thinking Adele would go up to the loft to talk to the Captain Valkov and ask him question that he couldn't answer. The first day he'd offered to surrender himself for her father but they both knew that, that would be insanity. It would make things worse than better and give proof to what the authorities wanted to believe. Then he wanted to leave the house for the fear of brining more danger on them. Adele made him swear that he wouldn't do something as drastic as that.

"Your wound would open again and you would die in the streets or be arrested and they wouldn't know that you'd been hidden here. They'll come back to look for you, I know it and you do too."

"Curse this leg, what have I brought on you all? They can't do anything to him even these people, not to a foreigner and Talmishman. Your ambassador-"

"Our ambassador! He thinks more of his puppy than of-they think we're radicals to have come here, democrats. I can see it in their eyes; they think its Divine Punishment on us."

"I thought you were a democrat?"

She looked at him with such self torture in her face that he said quickly, "I'm not trying to be cruel for pity's sake and how could I want to be? I was a democrat once, a republican and I believed in the sacred people. I still do believe in the real people but not in these swine. If only I could walk, if I could get out and try to help."

"How? Tell me what to do! I'll go anywhere, see anyone, only tell me!" the candlelight shadows of the beams, the spider's webs, the mice scurrying, no longer frightened of the and the stale remains of yesterday's stifling heat. She should bring him downstairs again and the certainty that she could beside it would be safe. The men wouldn't come back but something herald her and she didn't know what. A sense that she didn't want to Loretta or Ester. Ester came up to him during the days to feed him, change the bandages and give him medicines. Perhaps Loretta came she said that she did although Adele found that hard to believe but not impossible. All she knew was that he was hers.

Not in that way that-that she had thought of him before, nothing of that, not to touch him but to look at him. Only someone to talk to and to tell what happened. He was hers to ask, "Will it be alright? They cant surely they cant-?" then hear him say, "No of course they can't of course not. They'll have to let him go as soon as-"

Then for a few minuets to try to forget what was happening and to think of something else. Telling about Menos, Cousin Kenny, uncle George-get him to talk about himself-about Kirovia.

He didn't talk very much just only a sentence here and there, broken off with a sharp impatience as if the past was done and best not remembered. Gradually over the day and nights she had begun to learn something of his past and of what had brought him ere. The war of Kirovia; not the war that Uncle George and her father and their friends talked of at the supper table in Talmond. Of the sieges and strategies, the generals and the swift night marches, of tribes, of scouting through the mountain passes and immense forests, of crossing vast rivers that no western man had seen before and travelling though an empty continent like the Garden of Eden soon after the Devil entered it.

"It only I was a man!" she whispered as the images of riding through those forests and him for a companion. She thought, "If I had found such a country I should never have come back."

HE told her of that too, of coming back to an Aserythe on the edge of revolution; of the time when everything had seemed as if it was going to be made new, there were new leaders who would lead the country to life, liberty and happiness.

"Instead of that," he said, "the damned lawyers' clerks and the money man have got hold it. We tried to warn the King and tried to tell him what was happening. we tried to save him and now-" he opened and closed his fist as if it held something that he was letting fall to smash on the floor, " Now no one can save him."

The thought of the King in prison brought them full circle back to the present and tomorrow. She'd catch her breathe unable to manager her voice properly and wanting to cry and shout at him, "Tell me again! They can't do anything to him? They talked of the guillotine! Why should they even say that? To frighten him and me?"

His hands had grown stronger and there was health coming back into the feel of is skin but they were still cold but warm with every touch. His voice grating with impatience to be up and out to-to see to his own affairs? He had spoken once a long time, days and days and weeks ad years ago of sending a message to someone to tell them that he as safe and being cared for.

"No better not. You can't know who's still to be trusted." that had been when he still had the fever, before Papa-

"Is there no one who could help? That I could go to?"

"No one who might not make things worse. It's not a question of sending a message, I'd have to talk to them sound them out so that they know what's been happening since I've been here." he freed his hands and pushed his finger though his red hair. He could shave himself now and his cheeks shone slightly and his skin was totally pale while his blue eyes were brighter as though they were happy.

"I'm so frightened for him because he can't understand anything. You see he can't talk to anyone and I don't know if he's been eating the food I bring him. He's probably giving it away that's how kind he is behind all the noise he make and shouting."

"I'll get up tomorrow and go out. I'll find someone; I managed to walk the breath of the room today."

"You can't," she caught him hands again," Lie down and be quiet. I should be letting you sleep instead of-"

"You should be asleep yourself or you'll get sick."

She pressed him down against the pillows. The covers had fallen away from his chest and her hair spilled down to touch him and lay against his arm and shoulder. He had begun to breathe faster as his eyes stared at her lime green eyes. "Go away now! You don't know what you're doing."

She didn't move.

"I'm warning you go! Leave me alone!"

She shut her eyes and wanted to put her forehead against his chest. His hand were gripping her wrists tighter and tighter. Making her feel that she was captured and that she couldn't move. He as trying to push her up away from him but he could only spread her wrists apart. His laid her head down on him as though surrendering. Hie heart beat was heavy against her mouth.

He put his arms around her and she stretched herself down beside him with the covers half between them, Adele's breast against him and their mouths close.

"You don't know what you're doing!"

She didn't answer but kissed him without thinking that she was going to. The sky blue haired woman did it as if it was only for reassurance and forgetfulness.

"Hold me."

"No!"

She was shivering in long tremors that ran from her shoulder to her feet. His hand were on her skin under the shift and nightgown. His hands also were shivering and griping suddenly the buttocks, the inside of her legs; as if he wanted to hurt her, "For the last time go away!"

Adele had her arms around him holding him close. "Let me lie beside you." she whispered, "Just for a little while." she didn't realise what she was saying. He pulled the blankets away from between them and pushed her legs apart.

Like being stabbed, like a thick knife forced into her body. Lying under him with her face against his neck. The muscles of his shoulder were between her teeth as his hand pulled her down, his finger digging into the flesh as Adele let out a cry of pain and he gasped for breathe. It was like riding bareback naked as the horse gathered strength, the lean muscles stretching and heaving each time until he lay slack and still then the pain died away.

"I've killed him," she though but she couldn't move as she was pinned under his dead body holding it and tasting blood and salt sweat. Her hands were behind his shoulders; luckily his heart was beating against hers. They lay like that for a long time until he began to stoke her back under the shift. His fingers running down the valley of her spine to her waist, over her hips and down as far as he could reach.

"I've lain here thinking of doing this," he whispered into her ear, "I swore I wouldn't."

"What have we-what-did you-?" they had made love. Made love, Adele thought wonderingly, like dreaming. Everything far away, indefinitely far off. That was what the pain had been.

He held her by her hair and lifted up her head until he could look into her lime green eyes. She wanted to touch his face and stroke the lines of his mouth but she wanted more to say, "You're mine, you belong to me." Adele wanted to kneel up to look at what brought her so much, at where she bit him. The mark of her teeth, an area a dull purple wound oozing a bit of blood. Her silky mass of blue hair was falling forward as the candle flame illuminated its colour to make it look like crystal water.

"Lay down beside me."

Adele laid herself down and instantly but slowly his hands were touching her as if they were exploring, finding, wanting to remember. He pulled her close and covered them both.

"What have we done?"

"Your father-"

"Not now. Tomorrow. Now hold me closer noting will happen to him? Promise me."

"Nothing I swear it. Let me-and I'm the first? You've never-" he gently stoked her hair and throat. Kissing each in turn. "I've lain day after day and night after night. Imagining-how has no one ever-what are Talmishmen made of?" he was stroking the length of her side from the arm pit to the hip bone and around the groin to her lap.

"Papa says that I frighten men away."

He began to laugh but lay back as he started to choke with too much laughter.

Adele turned on her side towards and laid her arm over his chest, "And you? You've had lots of -lovers?"

He looked at her as the candlelight illuminated her form. "Are you jealous already?"

Suddenly she was with such a shock of jealousy that if felt like the pain was coming back. "Don't laugh! Don't tell me!" she laid her palm over his mouth before another word was uttered.

After a while she raised her elbow to stare down at him like a lioness over her kill, over her mate.

He held her away from him for a second or to and they drew her down until her hand separated their mouths, "Lay on me," he whispered, his voice was thick. She could feel his heart beating against her breast; his body damp cold with sweat as if the fever had come back.

_'He is mine,'_ Adele thought, 'If he has had a thousand lovers he's mine now."

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Adele woke up without being sure of where she was or what had happened. The seemed to be an emptiness of the bed beside her, a dream? She sat up in the greyness of light from the small dust covered skylight, there he was walking around. He had to bend his head, as she did to avoid the roof beams, the joists and the many cob webs that draped the roof. He limped as he walked, curing under his breath and holding his wounded lag with both hands against the bandage. Instantly Adele knew what he was going to do.

"No! You're not going!" Adele sat up and furiously caught hold of him and dragging him back down onto the mattress.

'I can walk," he said.

"No!" she held him to her and found his mouth. She could feel her nerves quivering. It had seemed to her as if she had never been alive before, never known what life was and what her body was. Her hair was part of her alive and burning, her hands, her skin and the feeling of her beat of her own heart. The sky blue haired woman felt that she needed to do some tremendous things that break, crush, smash something and use all her strength. She felt it like a pressure bursting inside her for the first time. As if she belonged to a new race that had nothing in common with the Loretta's, or the Queens.

She kissed him gently, brushing her mouth against his forehead and cheekbone. HE kissed her, her shoulder, her breast and sliding his arm behind her back.

"No, it will kill you, wait, and wait for a time, until tonight, until you're strong again. I'll fetch broth; Ester will make you more medicine." Adele whispered into his shoulder.

It seemed like an immense sacrifice and the pleasure of making ti had its own sensuality and joy. Adele began to lay him down and cover him. She would have liked to be able to fasten his hands to imprison him but he didn't need imprisoning. He lay as weak as drowned man with only his alive. She closed the blue eyes with her fingertips. What made him laugh? What could he find to laugh at in making love?

She forced herself up and pulled on her nightgown. Something seemed different about her waist, her body, the feel of her own flesh as she tightened the girdle. There was so much strength in her hands, her body and if she did pulled tighter the girdle would burst.

"Lie still," the sky blue haired woman said then went down the ladder, down the stairs to the apartment. Her bedroom seemed strange and cold as it belonged to someone else. She opened the curtains and window to breathe in the morning air. She had forgotten her father. Forgotten? She hadn't stopped thinking of him all night, during- everything. HE had been there in the back of her mind. There was nothing in the world that was impossible, if she could she would rush into there and free her father but that would give the soldiers a reason to arrest her.

"This is another kind of morning. Look at it! Look at the sun!" Adele wanted to shout to the people in the streets below.

There was a sound behind her and when the sky blue haired woman turned Ester was there sleepy and fastening her gown yawning and stitching. "Madam Adele!" looking at the untouched bed and the smooth pillow. "Madame is early."

"Make us some broth and medicine and-food."

"I'll bring it upstairs to you."

Adele went to the oriental girl and caught hold of her on the shoulders. The shoulders smooth and rounded as a golden pear, soft and yielding under the white muslin and red satin ribbons.

"Why does he laugh at me?" she wanted to shake her until the round head rolled off her shoulders and the eyes would be frightened but they were never frightened.

"Men have to laugh at what makes them afraid."

Adele didn't understand it but she let go of Ester. She wanted to say, "Medicine to make him strong," and was ashamed but she didn't have to say it aloud.

Later upstairs as they ate the food and drank the wine and broth, "Why do you laugh at me?"

"I don't laugh," he said and laughed aloud, but luckily it didn't make her angry.

_'He truly is afraid of me,'_ she thought gently over the rim of her cup.

"Is it because I'm so big, so tall? I'm not like-other women."

"It's wonderful," he said, "I swear it, you're wonderful." but his eyes still laughed.

"I must get dresses and go." Adele said, "Don't move. Don't-" there really wasn't any needed to say it because he lay very still trying to smile, "Ester will come to you."

He whispered blasphemies under his breathe but she knew they were at himself, his condition and not at her. The night had gone and the terror had never left her but only withdrawn into the shadows. Everything else was a charade. She went downstairs and gave her orders to Ester then walked into Loretta's darkened, scented, orchid-house of a bedroom.

"Are you leaving us again?" Loretta asked in a plaintive voice out of the dark, "I'm so afraid about that man up in the loft. Oh Adele! How can you be so cruel to me?"

The sky blue haired woman hesitated closing her eyes and imagining herself lifting her cousin and hitting some sense to her.

"I shall be back before dark," Adele said.

She didn't bother looking for a carriage as the sir cleared her head as she walked. The basket weighed nothing on her arm. Taking a carriage would have brought too much attention to her. Mostly her height brought enough attention but the people on the streets took nothing of a lady carrying a basket like a market girl with a basket of eggs. She had found an apron, long blue cotton skirts and a red scarf. If she spoke Aserythian then they wouldn't suspect her too much.

She strode in the sunshine carrying her basket of wine, chicken, peaches, hard boiled eggs and a jar of broth. She also brought some clean clothes and coins for he was to be free today. It must happen, it must! She would go to the embassy again to Lord Gary if he would see her at last and perhaps he had already done something. Now-or the Citizen Marcello's old serving woman or Doctor Cruesole- he hadn't a wicked face, mad but not wicked. A lot of people said that he was the only who cared anything for real people, the poor and wretched, the workmen and beggars. The others were what you liked; they were in it for themselves as Tala said they were. Lawyers and shopkeepers who wanted nothing out of the revolution except what the aristocrats use to have. A revolution to pull down the dukes and set up money lenders in their places. Doctor Cruesole was surely different; he was what she had always thought of ever since it had begun. Of men who burned with love again, go to his office; wait for him, no matter what the old usher had said about of him. She saw the thick broken nose the wet mouth, the mad, searching eyes, the twitching of his body and the thick hand scratching down below. It scared her to let the thought go further so she looked away.

_'T__he world is mad,'_ she thought and looked at the street around her, the people, the river, the bridge, as if it was made of nightmares and at any second would turn to blood. The citizen Pierre with his pretty round face and his fresh scented clothes. "No citizeness leave your petition with the usher. It shall be attended to, I promise you."

Adele couldn't think that her father could be in that stinking room with eighty, ninety others crammed in without air to breathe, water to clean themselves, a closet to go to in decency. Only bucket overflowing with putrid vileness.

The Mairie's courtyards was always crowded with guards, ushers, messengers, idlers but difference about ti were the different faces and the hurrying tension. Adele felt it like turning a corner into a biting wind. She began to hurry to push her way through to the doorway and the stairs.

"You citizeness, yeh the tall one, where do you think you're going?"

"To my father, he's-"

A guard she knew taking his pipe out of his mouth looked at her almost pityingly. "He's gone they're all gone the ones upstairs too. We're getting a new lot soon."

"Gone?" like a shriek she grasped his arm. "He can't be gone tell me where have you-?"

"Get off me go find him yourself bitch of an aristocrat." he pushed her roughly off him then winked at her. Adele heisted a little as the man's eyes looked towards the gat and she nodded. On her way she said to the woman, the abbe's servant, coming breathlessly late.

"They've gone" Adele said." Taken them away."

"Gone? My master?" the woman said.

"Wait." the woman stopped and they waited for a quarter of an hour.

Blanchet was trembling as an old grey haired woman with a black cotton bonnet and black shawl appeared. The guard came out and spat, "The Abbaye," he said

"My master-" the old woman rushed forward grabbing the guard's leg.

"Get away from me you old hag. You should be in jail with him now clear off with you." he went inside Adele pulled the old woman up.

"Be quiet come with me. Where is Abbaye prison? Which one could he mean?"

"The rue Sainte-Margertite" the woman said, "Why had they-?"

Across the river again, was Sainte-Margertite with its stone walls, locked timber gates in a vast archway and wicket gate. Adele knocked then had to wait a little while before being let in at last by the chief gatekeeper. He was a large man with a red sash and a round, sweaty unshaven belly and gross black hairs coming out of the open shirt. He fingered through the heavy book.

"Abbe Montbeliar, refractaire. Yes we've got him and we'll keep him don't worry he won't get lost." the gross laugh and stink of garlic and stale tobacco was too over powering and the women had to cover their noses.

"Ba-l-ti-mor ah the devil take his wretched tongue twister of a name. What do you call your imbecile of a father?

"Baltimore, monsieur Harrison Baltimore. Is he here? Is he?"

Adele thought of the money and found it in the basket and sliding it across the table.

"Aye, he's here if that's how you say it. It's like puking up your filthy language. Bal ti morse, foreign spy. let's see your baskets you don't fool me with your foreign tricks. No weapons in the bread eh?"

The man's filthy hands dug into the white cloths, breaking open the white loaves.

"Good white bread for these whore's droppings and we get stuff that'd plug up your guts. Aright let em through."

Iron grinding then the stone corridors and the stench of urine were things that would make you double over in pain. There was despair everywhere as the gates clanged prisoners grabbing for a way out of the living hell.

"In here, shout thorough that door and I'll put your baskets in when you're going."

"Papa, papa! are you there?" the sky blue haired woman called.

"Monsieur l'abbe? It's me Blanchet! My master!"

Voices and the shuffling of feet as Mr Baltimore called, "Adele, Adele! My dear! My dear!"

"I've-I've brought your-your dinner." leaning her forehead against the timber as tears run down her face.

The woman was crying besides her whispering to the abbe, "They can't do anything to you, you who are so good."

Another woman behind them cried out, "Monsieurs monsieur Alexander, Monsieur Edward, my children are you there? The nurse woman staggered with her basket so big that she could hardly lift it from the ground. There was also an old priest that trailed with the nurse.

"I've come to find my brother," he said to the guard but he merely laughed.

"He's right in there alright so we'll put you in since you willingly walked her by your won will."

"Put me-?"

The door opened and the guard took their baskets and threw them inside.

"Get in with the rest of them,"

Adele got a glimpse of her father beside the half opened door. A long crowded room so high it vanished into the shadows. On the littered floor she saw mattresses straw and men laying down, sitting with hunched knees and those staring faces that prisoners have. The door slammed, "What are you doing? I only came-"

The guards laughed slapping their thighs, "That old fool can talk is head off now, say mass with them."

The guards took the three women away from the prison into the streets and left them there. Adele was sure that she could get her petition through and possibly see Mayor Pierre or maybe doctor Cruesole. When she saw them she ran after them but they seemed to not notice, "Citizen please listen to me let me speak to you only a moment!"

There was no luck to get to talk to them and so Adele was on the street again looking at a poster. A man was reading slowly at the top of his voice. "Citizens this is to warn you of the day's general order for all the inhabitants of Ishe. At 8 hours of the evening all active citizens are to report to the headquarters of their Section for important instruction. Every other person, male or female is to be indoors in their own house by 11 o'clock. Each house must be lit and the door left open whether the street door or into the courtyards, obey without fail on the order of the Commune this Wednesday the 29th August 1792."

"What does it mean?"

"They locking for spies,"

"No they're looking for priests! Refractories. They're going to search every house I heard it from my brother he's a cook at the Palais-Royal."

"They're going to search for arms you fool, they're looking for Royalists. There's ten thousand of em hidden in attic all over Ishe. They've got guns and they're going to start a rising on Sunday I hear it from-"

"I'm going home now I've got a bit of cash put away that I don't want those thieves laying their hands on."

"What's that you said?" what did that man just say? Stop him that man in a blue coat stop him! Bring him to Mairie, I heard him calling good patriots thieves. Hoarding gold! He's a royalist."

The crowd was melting and vanishing as the man in the blue coat was shouting protests. "I never said anything it wasn't me citizens do I looked like a man who would?"

Hidden in attic all over Ishe. Attics? Every house to be left open? 11 tonight searched-running afraid to run. What time it now? 4 in the afternoon I must get him away. How disguised as what a soldier? A woman? A servant? They would see his wound his limp. Running again to the house and not stopping to speak to Loretta or Ester.

He was asleep but woke as her cam through the open trap door. Dear heaven how could she have left it open the ladder there as if there was no more danger. He waited and watched her. His eyes serious and his expression changing.

"Get me my clothes."

"No!"

"Do you think I'm not going to stay here and let you be-?"

"No!"

He sat quietly looking at his wounded leg. "Get me a couscous. It'll bring me where I need to go. There's a man-"

"No!"

"Listen to me I should've gone before. I'm going if I have to get up through that skylight and crawl from roof to roof. Get the carriage now! I know what I'm doing."

She began to argue and he gripped her wrist. "Do what I tell you," he said as if he was talking to a man, a soldier under command.

"Tala," she had never said his name, never as much as _'Monsieur Valkov.'_

"Do what I tell you." he said again as he caught her with his other hand at the nape of her neck. "I'll not laugh at you again." he kissed her mouth, "Now go."

When she came back with the couscous, tilting and swaying on its ancient springs, its horse spavined and starving, its driver complaining of the heat. Tala was already in the hall waiting for her as Ester was supporting him.

"Not dressed like that!" Adele whispered. She ran upstairs and found her deepest brimmed bonnet and a cloak and scarf before coming down and putting them on him. "You're my grandmother, very ill I thought of it as I looked for the cab. Come I'll help you. I'm coming with you to where you're going to make sure you're safe. Don't argue."

He was not strong enough to argue. Even the effort of dressing had brought on a fever sweat. She brought him outside, "Not you." she said to Ester, and the driver would remember an oriental servant girl and the address.

"This is my grandmother." she said to the driver. "We must go very gently don't drive too fast, she shouldn't have come visiting today, she's not well enough."

"Rue de Sainte Vierge." Tala whispered his voice and old woman's whisper as if all his life he had acted. "Just by the church number 14."

In the cab they held hands like lovers except that she sweated in fear. They were lovers for one night! And now- "How will I know you're safe?" she breathed. "Where are you going?"

he rested hi head on her shoulder and old woman's head on her strong granddaughter's shoulder if anyone was looking. "A man called Bryan," he said "A swine one of the patriots but he owes me a great favour and he can't refuse."

"Bryan? Isn't he?"

"We were in the school together. He's probably a great man by now but he likes to keep in touch with both sides just in case. What do you know about him?"

"Nothing, I've only seen him. He's in the Commune on the committee of something I'm not really sure."

"Maybe he can help your father. I'll try sssh we're near. Get out with me let the driver go."

They got down in a narrow street where there was filth in the gutters that ran down to the centre of a cobbled roadway.

"Oh my rheumatism!" Tala whispered, be careful of me girl, you're so clumsy!"

"You're not so small yourself old grandmother," the driver said, "She'd a good girl to mind you so well."

Tala fumbled under his woman's cloak, the bonnet and cloak was too smart for the street and too foreign. Thank heaven that the driver didn't have an eye for details.

"Here." she said to the driver paying him," we're alright now."

He drove away and Tala hobbled lead on Adele's arm. "Not 14." He said, "That was for him, 18 is over there." she felt him weighing on her arm footsteps were beyond the door. Somehow she had expected a woman to answer them but it was Citizen Bryan himself. The tall thin figure with silver grey hair and grey eyes. As if she had known him for a long him his face was so instantly familiar and he didn't seemed too surprised to see her, only angry remembering her calling after him at the Palais royal. Thinking that she e had traced him here.

"Citizeness!" he looked at her companion.

"Jin, let us be quick." Tala said.

Monsieur Bryan stood back to make way for them, he didn't ask any questions. When the door was she he led the way at a quick pace down the hall past a dark stairway and opened a door to a courtyard. Adele supported Tala almost carrying him. Monsieur Bryan seemed to know without asking what they wanted; the courtyard was occupied with a carpenter's affairs. Stacks of fresh cut timber, workbenches and some chairs half made. Monsieur Bryan stepped up some stairs that led to a loft and in which Adele followed close behind.

In the loft there was a smell of sawdust, wood and resin. There were stacks of the same rough made chairs and piles of timber. She eased Tala down on one o the bale and he shut his eyes as sweat poured down his face.

"come." the Citizen Bryan said, he beckoned her out onto the wooden seat again and let the way down into the house. He still didn't ask anything. In a small room there was a mattress on a truckle bed and he gave it to her to carry with the blankets and pillows. While she was arranging them in the corner for Tala to lie on he followed her with a basket. Wine glasses and clean rags and a loaf of white bread.

"I warned you," he said to Tala pouring out the wine. "Give it to him" he said to Adele as he poured himself a glass.

"What's going to happen tonight?" Adele said not able to keep back the questions any longer." Will he be safe with you?" looking at him at the sneer and eyes trying to believe that he would help.

"We're searching for arms," he said, "and suspects." the sneer became deeper more mocking. "He'll be safe." looking at her but seeming not to need to ask anything. "You can go now."

"But-"

"Do as he says." Tala whispered. "I'll be alright here."

She stood up but Monsieur Bryan didn't stand he had pulled forward one of the kitchen chair and was sitting quite elegantly leg crossed sipping his wine.

"Wait down there," he said nodding to the doorway. She went slowly looking back. Tala was lost in the shadows lying on the mattress as if he had never belonged to her.

It was a good ten minuets before he followed her down.

"Go out this way." he said nodding towards the gates, "And walk home make sure that there's not a trace of him where you've been keeping him. Nothing."

"Will he-"

"I've told you." he gripped her by the elbow making to push her out of the courtyard.

"If he's not-if you-"

The sneer deepened, "you'll what? Mind yourself and I'll mind him. Now go."

It was only then that she thought of her father. Adele turned and caught hold of his black coat sleeve. "My father is in prison."

He tried to push her outside but she was too strong. "You must listen! What is going to happen to him?"

"How do I know? Let me go!" his voice was savage with dislike. "Why did you come to Ishe?"

"We-I believed in you! In what you're doing! I'm still willing to-I know its a mistake someone thought-"

The contempt in his face was like a whip. "You believe! You Talmish imbecile! What so you know about anything? You-woman! Get out and don't dare lay your hands on me."

"I wont go till you tell me! He has done nothing he is more innocent than Tala. Ten thousand more." she wouldn't let go of his wrists.

"What do you want?"

"I want him to be free of course!"

"Let me go you don't know what you're asking let me think." she did let go and he turned and walked the length of the courtyard. After a moment he beckoned her and in the house took a sheet of paper and a pen and ink. "Take this to Pierre." he said, he scribbled for a moment sanded and folded the sheet, "no go before I have you arrested too."

"And Tala, how will I know-when will I-"

"Get out of my sight!"

"But I must know!"

"Why did god make woman? Get out! He'll send word for you. Someone will tell you that the Kirovian is safe, now go."

He pushed her out into an empty laneway. She opened the folded paper, "I know nothing against the foreigner she will speak of. Help her if you think it fit. Bryan." on the outside of the fold he had written, "To Mayor Pierre by hand urgently." behind her the wicket gate was shut as his footsteps faded away.

"Monsieur!"

No answer, "I know nothing against-" she tried to think could that be enough? Had he tricked her fobbed her off? Urgently by hand urgently. She began to run as a clock chimed seven and then a quarter. Quarter past seven! Where would he be now! Where! The Mairie? The Hotel de Ville? At his house? Where was his house?

It was ten o'clock before she saw him. She had sat in his ante room for two hours and been told a dozen of times he wouldn't come and leave the paper until tomorrow. He would see no one tonight of all nights. He was still at the Hotel de Ville.

"He's not! I've been they told me!"

"He'll wont come here go home everyone must be indoors by 11 there is a curfew."

But Adele didn't move and at ten five minuets past ten came he came with his quick bustle.

"Citizen Pierre here's a message from the citizen Bryan let me give it to you please it's urgent, it's marked urgent!"

He recognised her and a look of tired exasperation came over his face like a grey veil. "Citizeness!" then as if it had taken moments for what she said to penetrate though his tiredness he clicked his fingers, "Give it to me"

One of the ragged patriots surrounding him made to take the paper from her but she forced her way past him until she could lay it in his hands personally. He read it and then handed it back.

"Have no fears citizeness all will be well with him."

"But I haven't told you yet1 my father monsieur Baltimore the Talmishman he's in the Abbaye prion he was transferred there today last night they're saying -" she dared not to say the words' murder and execution' dared not say anything.

"All will be well by the week end. By Sunday night. He'll be released by then I promise you."

"Not until Sunday? But it is Wednesday, only Wednesday he had done nothing."

A sans-culote pushed her away and she fended him off like a child annoying her and the man staggered and shouted. "Whore's bitch!"

"Sunday I tell you now Citizeness-."

"Then at least write it here. Write an order put your name here that you approve I beg you in the name of everything you believe in. I beg you he's totally innocent he loves Aserythe. We're republicans we hate tyranny as you do please!"

Mayor Pierre clicked his fingers again, "pen and ink. A daughter's prayers" so sweet a smile like a saint. Men brought what was needed and a man bent his back for the mayor to write on. Waving the paper delicately in the air to dry then gave it back to Adele. "There citizeness do your duty love liberty have no fears."

he had written, "an order will arrive for Monsieur Baltimore at 3 o'clock of the afternoon Sunday 2nd September signed Pierre, Maire de Ishe." thank god she wanted to kneel and thank him but he was gone and his patriots following.

The streets were quiet silent as her lone footsteps echoed like shots in the empty city. Windows were lit and doors open. The patrols closing the entries to the streets four and five guards and a barrier of trestles of tables commandeered from somewhere.

"Why are you not at home citizeness? Didn't you hear the retreat?"

"I've been to Mayor Pierre. I'm going home now."

"Hurry its almost 11."

Adele finally reached the apartment and old Margareet was at the door look at out fro her, "Madame! Madame!"

Inside all safe thank goes thank god all safe!

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**Please read and review this story**

**Smiles and good whatever time you read this**

**ikl wings**


	6. Chapter 5

**This is going okay and is completed**

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Chapter 5**

They didn't come until four in the morning and al night the silence of a dead town and streets all waiting for the end of the patrol. Once there was a woman shouting far down the street, "No no no! He's not a priest!" then silence.

At one o'clock Loretta fell asleep. She had dressed herself in her most beautiful negligee and spent a long time doing her hair. Once she knew that Tala was gone, she was no longer really frightened only pleasantly afraid. Allowing herself sensual frissons of terror and begging Adele to comfort her to hold her. In the absence of any man she treated Adele like a substitute stroking her arm and saying how strong she must be and how dreadful it must be to be so strong. Loretta wondered how wonderful and asking repeatedly what happened. Who would come to search, what would they say and what would they do?"

"How would I know you imbecile?"

"Oh Adele you're so cruel to me!" as if she longed for the right kind of cruel, "Where is Ester, I want a foot rub and my hair brushed?"

"She cant, not now, she must help me scour the apartment for any trace of Tala." Adele also looked for more papers were overlooked and could still be taken When they had done everything that could be don't they went down to Madame de Martinique and Margareet to see if they needed anything but the two old women had already stupefied themselves with brandy.

There was nothing to do but wait. Loretta was asleep and Ester silent as Adele wanted them to be. Ester looked at her with those ivory eyes seeming to be able to look at her no matter where the round head was directed. Ask me her eyes said, mocking _'Ask me, white Madame, about your stupid lover who knows nothing and maybe I shall tell you something or maybe not.'_

Silence.

3 o'clock, half past, four striking. In the silence of the house, the mantle clock in the anteroom stroked a warning. Ester lifted her head listening before coming to her feet slowly.

"They're coming."

It was another minute before Adele could bear their footsteps. No shouting, no banging of musket butts against doors but a man reading a paper. 'The Citizeness de Martinique, a ci-devant, the Citizeness Margareet Devon, the foreigners two remain here the rest upstairs, begin with the attics.

The search was quiet, polite and methodical. Adele had left the ladder on the landing below the loft.

"What's up there Madame?"

"I don't know, we're only visitors here, Madame de Martinique is a distant cousin of my cousin."

"Nothing up here."

Two men climbed down as cobwebs draped their shoulders and hats.

"The two old women below are drunk, Citizen, nothing there."

"What are you looking for?"

They didn't answer and Loretta was awake, beautiful in terror. The officer. if he was an officer took his hat off to pay respects to her and gave her, "Mademoiselle," as if there were such things as ci-devants, his eyes admired her beauty. He had manners and bearing of a ci-devant himself, the salon grace, even men were cleaner that the ordinary. They didn't smash locks or throw things but if there had been a mouse hidden they would have found it. Adele's heart felt like it was about to burst as if Tala was still there.

"The roof," the officer said to the men who had searched the loft, "Did you look up top? There's a skylight."

"We did but there was nothing there."

It was a quarter past five before they left, the same officer saluted Loretta then Adele before leaving. He ordered one of his men to replace a carpet that had been turned back to look under it.

Adele sat in one of the chairs in the ante room with her green eyes shut. Ester was putting Loretta back to bed.

_'I must go to bed soon, at least for an hour. It is way too early to go to the prison now, to tell her father that he would be released on Sunday. It was too early for hope that Tala had sent word. How would word come from him?'_ The sky blue haired woman thought to herself.

A scary thought entered her mind, _'What it Citizen Bryan doesn't look after Tala and lets him die or worse hand him over to the Commune or the Section.' _she had to hold herself back from running down the streets to beat the courtyard door and force her way in, in order to see that Tala was alive with her own lime green eyes.

Ester was at her side, "Stay quiet Madame," she said, although Adele had said nothing or moved, "He is safe enough."

"How do you know?" she caught the girl's hand and held it in both hers.

Ester looked down at her as she sat, the malice gone from her eyes or at least hidden. She almost looked sad as if she didn't want to know the things she knew. "He's safe."

"And my father?"

"He is too."

"Thank god," she buried her face against the mass of straight black hair, though Ester was a servant to Loretta she was treated like a friend and so she was able to wash her hair with some of the scented washes that Loretta gave her. "How do you know things?" almost like a child's question to a mother, "How?"

Adele was so tired that she rested her head softly against the girl's shoulder and could understand why Loretta found comfort from her and even depend on her. She felt that she was surrounded by safety and strength, like being held by one's mother, and ideal mother who knew everything as was so strong and wise that nothing could ever harm them. A unlike her own mother was-.

"are you good?" she whispered, Ester touched her hair slowly closing her fingers in it before lifting it so that Adele's head was away from her. It was like looking at the inner soul and see nothing but crimson and blood. As if the blood was running how the wall, a curtain, ca cataract of blood but it was only Ester's gown. Her tight crimson bodice and silk skirts.

"Go to sleep," Ester whispered.

The sky blue haired woman did sleep and dreamed of blood.

At the prison her father scarcely believed her that he would be free on Sunday and then he pretended to believe so that she would stop shouting. Adele showed him the papers to the gate keeper at the Abbaye, the undertakers and the guards holding it all the time in terror that they might snatch it from and destroy it and yet needing to show it.

"Oh aye," they said, "Sunday is it 3 o'clock? Oh aye like enough."

Thursday, Friday, Saturday. To the prison everyday with food, wine and linen before headed home to the apartment. Talking to no one and looking into every rumour, the army, everyone between 16 and 55 no, 60 no, 55 must report to be recruited. They can't take old men.

"My husband is ill, they can't take him!" women talking in front of the posters around the city.

_'Every proprietaire, every head locatiare of the house. Every man must be prepared to volunteer. To arms Citizens! The revolution is in danger! The enemy means to destroy our lives, your liberty. Report to your Section. Report what arms you have.'_

_Every horse, carriage, or saddle horse is to be reported._

_To arms!_

_Defend your lives! Defend the revolution!_

Sunday came, waking and making sure that the paper was on her bedside table. The order should arrive at 3 o'clock. 3 o'clock, eight more hours, eight! He would need food like every other day, clean linen and money. Well the money is for the gatekeepers and the guards. Money to leave behind with the poor men who would not be freed today. Would they all be freed now that the search was over?

She made up the basket and forced herself to drink some honey and milk then wait to nine o'clock. She couldn't stay in the house listening to Ester and Loretta gossiping in Creole and sipping hot chocolate as if she was kissing the cup.

Adele went down into the street and began to walk. Men leading horses out of the courtyards, the horses fretful at being taken away by strangers. Old grooms protested and complained as their beloved horses were being towed away. The hours went by like snails, eleven, twelve, one o'clock. The crowds have started to gather everywhere.

"La Patrie est en danger! Aux prisons citizens, they'll try and break out and kill us all. Aux prisons."

Some of the onlookers with cards pushed into the ribbons of their hats, 'Pierre or death'

_'I've his paper,'_ she thought, _'I've his promise. Found it hard to breathe as she walked and begun to run. To the prisons? What are they going to do there?'_

There were more people coming and Adele couldn't run no more as they blocked her way.

"The Jerussians have taken Verdel! Everything is lost, the army is destroyed!"

"To the prisons, kill the bastards, kill the aristocrats, and kill the priests! Burn them out!"

Everywhere the crowd was running and leaving Adele in a tight spot against a stone wall while a man made a speech that said death for the traitors at 2 o'clock, "TO the prisons!"

The crowd was a like a river even a flood full of hatred and fear like stenches boiling and bursting from the mud. She couldn't get out of the crowd to see over the heads of those in front of her. A man was giving orders, the Citizen Bryan. Black coated and the same dominating sneer.

Adele began to fight her way towards him, kicking and pushing. The Citizen Bryan was directing half a dozen men in shirt sleeves, "Let me through! I've a message for Citizen Bryan."

The men in shirt sleeve held axes and clubs like the porters at the meat market let her pass.

"Monsieur- Citizen, I've seen Mayor Pierre, he has given me a promise, a paper-"

At the name Pierre, the crowd had drawn back giving her room. The Citizen Bryan looked at her with hatred, "What the hell are you doing here?" he whispered and then in a louder voice, "Mayor Pierre? Why of course, citizeness. Show me the paper."

He read it, his mouth sneering almost laughing as if he was pleased now that she had helped her, "What do you want?"

The butchers' men craning their heads staring at the paper that was from the Mayor, from the Blessed Pierre.

"To go in to him, to wait with him until he is released."

He hesitated, smiled wider, an ugly, crooked smile showing all his teeth. "That might be best," he said, "But you'll have to go in here, they won't let you in anywhere else." He took one of the men's clubs and leaned on the heavy timber.

"Hulloa! Inside there! Citizens! Open up! Its I, Bryan, the Citizen Bryan waiting out here. I've a woman with an order for release for a prisoner. Let her in."

The crowd was murmuring, "Release? Release?"

Adele saw the bolts and locks as she stepped darkness of the narrow passage where some men said, "Take her where she wants to go."

A hand pushed inside and the door slammed then bolted behind her. The sky blue haired woman was in a long passageway with a flight of stairs at the far end. As she came to them a man was coming down towards her driven along by two warders. His shirt sleeveless and he was hatless with grey hair and a bewildered face. An old man most definitely. "I'm released, "he said as if he couldn't believe it.

He was shoved past her, "Get on with you old man. Out into the sunshine with you."

Up the stairs into a small room that was stifling hot was a table and five men like judges, a crowd of guard and prisoners. The judges looked at her in astonishment.

"An order from Mayor Pierre, the prisoner Balt-" the guard didn't bother to read it out and gave the paper to one of the judges who merely waved it away.

"Not here, take her to the greffe. Next prisoner, have you taken the oath?"

"No monsieur, I can't."

"Ah well release him,"

"Release me?"

She didn't hear more but outside she hear a muffled shouting and roar of hatred. She went through corridors to eventually reach the gatekeeper's room where normally she was let in. One of the gate keepers to whom she knew was behind the table sweating in fear.

She gave him her paper and he shook his head over it as if he had forgotten how to read. Outside that muffled roar again as if the whole prison was surrounded.

"What is happening? Are they releasing people already?"

"They're killing them," he said, "Heaven save us." he looked around to make sure that no other guards were around before he leant across the table. "They're killing them all."

"But my father! I've an order -from Mayor Pierre! He said himself so you got to release him, where is he? The order will come at 3 o'clock it says here in his own writing. I've seen two men released!"

He stared at her, "God can't permit it," he whispered, "I've been a jailer 30 years. I-"

She realised he was drunk as well as terrified. Adele went round the table and lifted him up from the chair, "Please take me to him. Where are the guards?"

He waved his arms helplessly and she took the keys from a numbered hook, "Take me to him yourself."

"I can't. I can't leave here."

The roar lifted like the sea beating against the cliffs. She thought she could distinctly hear, _'Death! Death! Death a mort!'_ the crowd was angry that prisoners were being set free?

"Take me to him!"

He led the way up the stone stairs trembling with every step. "They're eating," he said, "they don't know yet. Oh God, oh God."

A man was hurrying down the stairs, "They've paid me," he shouted. "Now they can go to Hell with easy consciences," he laughed like a madman running away.

The door that was as familiar as the hack of her hand was their final destination. "You'll have to shout loud-"

"But you're going to release him! You've seen the promise! Let me bring him down to your gate. Te order will come any minute." she snatched the keys from his hand and fumbled for the right key and finally finding it opened the heavy door. "Papa! Papa!"

Men's faces stared at her greenish with fear. A long table set with the remains of a meal. Slants of light from the high windows illuminated just a few people's faces.

"Papa!"

Down the stairs and behind the door crashed and a roaring of rage and triumph echoed along the stone walls.

"Get inside!" the old gatekeeper shouted, "they've broken in! Have mercy on all of us," he pushed her into the room, "Keep quiet," he hissed, "They may not come here." the door slammed shut and she was inside the room with the promise of her father's freedom still in her hand.

"They're going to release you," she said, "Mayor Pierre-"

Men were looking at her most of them old men but two of them young and so alike that they might be twin brothers.

"They've just given us a meal," her father said as if it was an important thing. He had grown strange in these past weeks. Placing the basket down on the ground, Adele hugged her father closely. Outside there was a noise of a mob through the thickness of the door. One of the prisoners climbed to the window to have a look but there was no such luck.

The two boys approached her, the one named Edward said, "What is happening outside mademoiselle? Have they begun the massacre? His face was alight with something past comprehension, which he could have stepped out of a painting and his hair angel gold.

A crash of muskets, clubs battered against the door and the timber echoed through the room. In the middle of the room every man had their hands held out above them all kneeling.

"They're all priests," her father said, "They've been very kind to me,"

"I confess before Almighty God-"

The two boys had joined then kneeling men as a thundering against the door and the shouting and cursing of the crowd increased. "Cursed traitors, assassins, priests, the justice of the people are here for you. Death death to them!"

It was impossible to think that all these people were to die today, her father, the two boys and the kneeling priests.

"Go forth O Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God, the father Almighty-"

There were men getting out through a window and vanishing while the shouts outside still revved on, "The bastards are escaping, pike them down, give me an axe, and hack at them. Murderers, murderers!"

"Christ have mercy on us,"

"I love you Papa." tears were running from her green eyes.

Then the door at the far end crashed open, "At the hour of our death-" the old tall priest opened out his arms like the Crucifixion above his kneeling brothers as me ran towards him and lifted axes and sabres. A sabre swung and he bent his head under the blow, Adele couldn't bear to look or speak as she clung to her father in a dark corner. The room was full of men shouting and cursing as the blood seeped from everywhere and the screams of the wounded men echoes the stone walls.

"Kill the bastards, kill the murderers!"

The stench of blood and terror made her want to faint but her father dragged her close to him as possible which calmed her slightly. The priests were still kneeling as they were being killed. One of the patriots grabbed the golden haired twin by the hair as he lifted his axe for a blow.

"No not him, he's too young, he's not a priest, hold citizen."

"Are you a priest little rat? Confess it."

"Kill me, kill me!"

"And me, I'm with my brother, blessed be God!"

The blade on the white throat, Adele shut her eyes and nearly half fainted from the sound of the boy's cry of agony, "Stop! In the name of the revolution stop. All is to be done by law."

Silence.

The men groaned as they died in agony. The old tall priest was already dead and one of the two brothers. Edward lay on his back with his throat cut and blood pouring out of the wound. How many dead? She couldn't look or trust herself to move but eventually she found herself moving and kneeling.

"God forgive them," a dying priest whispered as she held his head in her lap. One of the patriots made to kick her but the leader stopped her.

"Let her be," the leader said, "Her turn will come. Why is there a woman here?"

'My father is to be released."

He was not listening to her but calmly stepped over the dead, dying men and pools of blood. They left them in the dark as everything was ready.

Adele had carried the wounded priest to a corner and made a sort of bed from the discarded tablecloths.

"Now I'm content," he whispered, "I've shared my Lord's pain." his eyes looked a long away off and grew veiled.

There were other wounded men and her father helped her, the brother who wasn't killed, Alexander and other priests. The men who had tried to escape into a courtyard below the window were brought back with their hands roped. A sort of order began to be established and the prisoners who hadn't been wounded were made to stand in a line before the long table. Behind the table were five men with sashed and cockades. The leader, who had shouted 'stop' placed at the centre was younger, better dressed and had a handsomeness that was burning and yet full of joy. He made the others look like simple murderers.

Along the far wall Adele and her father with the others helping them had laid the dead and the wounded for ten minuets without being conscious of the time.

Eight dead, eleven wounded and bound up.

"Take him away," the head judge was saying. One of the unwounded priests had his hands bound behind him then led out the door. At the door one of the patriots knocked his hat off and kicked it across the floor.

"You wont need that."

"Next, have you taken the oath?"

"No monsieur, I can't."

"Take him away," the hat was knocked from his head and outside the guards laughed. Further down the step a long cry of terror and agony, "Oh my God, my lord and my God."

Alexander cried, "Take me! Take me! Let me be with my brother. Let me die!"

He had no hat to knock but was taken away like a bridegroom out of the far door.

The sky blue haired woman knelt where she was by the line of wounded men holding her father's hand. "They're going to release him," she told herself consistently. The order will come but deep down she knew that it wouldn't, that she had been tricked and they were both to die here. She recognised the priest m the old man who had come there only to see his brother. He went out of the same door as all the rest with his hat knocked away.

_'They're killing them all outside,'_ she thought. It couldn't be true but they were doing it as she spoked. One after the other, these old men and the young man and the others.

"Ask about me in the Cordeliers citizen! They will tell you! I swear by the name of liberty that I'm as good as a patriot as you are. Ask the Mareillais where I was on August the tenth! I was with them!"

"He was only brought this morning," her father whispered. "HE kept shoutin at everyone."

The man was put outside, a messenger was sent off for a witness while the trials went on. "Have you taken the oath?" most of the prisoners were priests who ha refused the oath that binds them to the state. One of the wounded men died so the casualty count grew and the line became shorter. Then only Adele, her father and the wounded men were left. One of the guards came for a wounded.

"Have you taken the oath?"

She was on her feet, staggering, as he, leg had gone to sleep from too long kneeling.

"You can't! You can't try a wounded man!" she didn't know why se said it or anything let alone shout it is Talmish than Aserythian. They stared at her like an apparition. Tall, lurching with blood on her elbows and her skirts in rags where she had torn off pieces to make bandages. For a moment, they thought that she was one of their own who had busted in from the courtyards.

"You can't touch him! Lay him down again!"

"He's a guilty man," the leader said, his voice almost polite but hoarse with tiredness. "Guilt doesn't come to an end with being wounded. What is your answer priest?"

The old man couldn't answer but stared around him as if he didn't know where he was.

"You can't try him if he doesn't answer. Lay him down!"

The door opened as Doctor Cruesole, the Citizen Bryan and four others came in. The judges got to their feet crying, "Welcome to the Citizens form the Union of the Cordeliers! Welcome to the Citizen Cruesole, to the Citizen Bryan and their colleagues. We invite your aid in dealing out revolutionary justice."

"I see that justice is being done citizens," Cruesole said. His hand under his shirt raking and raking as if his flesh tormented him. Twitching and staring about with his mad visionary eyes which stopped with he saw Adele. The Citizen Bryan had already seen her and seemed ill pleased.

"Let the Patriots of the Cordeliers judge this case," the leader of the judges said. He told Cruesole of the argument over the wounded man as if he was telling a joke at which he himself was to tire to laugh. The embers of fanaticism in his smile and the holy idealism that gave him inner joy if not peace.

"What had been begun must be ended," Doctor Cruesole said. "The Delegation of the Cordeliers votes for Death. If my colleagues agree?" he looked around him, one of his companions struck himself a blow in the chest. "Death for all suspects, all caloins, all traitors! I move that we resolve on cruelty! Only the axe can save us."

They carried the wounded man away and it took four men to hod Adele still.

"Who is this woman?" the leader of the judges said, wonderingly. "Is she mad? Why is she here?"

"I know her," Doctor Cruesole said, "A Talmishwoman. She has a father I think."

"I have an order from Mayor Pierre for his release! Look at it look!" Searching for the paper and holding it out. Blood was on it like a seal. "The Citizen Bryan-"

"I know her too," Bryan said, "She is stark mad. She should be locked away." his silver eyes caught hers threatening death.

"You're monsters," she whispered. "Monsters! Give me m father, he has done nothing, we came here as friends as lover of Liberty!" she shook herself free and came to the table as if it was she who was on trial.

"Let her go free," Doctor Cruesole said, "I've never seem a so tall a woman, she's a giantess. She'll make splendid children and plenty of spirit I see."

"Give me back my father!" she held the paper out in front of the judges and Doctor Cruesole. "You sent me to Mayor Pierre." she shouted at Bryan. "He promised me an order of release by 3 o'clock."

"Ah Pierre," Doctor Cruesole said, "He's a humourist but why not? Give her father back. He must be a strong man to produce such a daughter. I move to free this young woman and her father."

They were being led out of the door. Adele tried to struggle and say more about the wounded men but they forced her out of the door as if she was condemned.

"This is a trick another dirty trick, they want to kill us both." in a distant part of her mind she thought.

"Give the citizen his hat. any hat and put it on Citizen." they crammed a hat on her father's head and forced them down the stairs through the courtyard as bodies laid stained with blood on the stone. The guards shouted, "These two prisoners release by order of Citizen Cruesole."

Outside men with clubs raised and a bloody sabre as if they were about to strike whoever walked out of the door as it opened. The crowd stared and murmured as Adele and her father walked out of Sainte-Margertite. Her shoes slipped on the blood but hands held her up as voices shouted, "They're released, released, released! The Citizen Cruesole has released them."

"See his hat; he's wearing a hat to go free!"

The crowd surged as hands pushed them into the crowd as the men with axes made for them.

_'They will hit us from behind.'_ Adele thought. The crowd laughed and lifted them up above them.

"The friend's of the Citizen Cruesole! Released, released! Where to, where ti live? We'll bring you home!" like a flood the crowd abandoned death for the life for freedom and for the joy difference and dancing while chanting Ca ira ca ira.

"The rue de Martinique, the rue de Martinique! They live in the rue de Martinique!" the brought them home like captives, like heroes, like a sacrifice and set them in the hall then left.

Men were shouting as they marched down the street, "Long live the Citizen Cruesole long live the Cordeliers. Long live the revolution. Death to the traitors!"

Adele sank down on the floor of the black and whit marble hall, and began to cry as if she was weeping blood.

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She count sleep, rest, or even keep the house. The first night she had slept because of Ester giving her a drug that made her sleep for twelve hours and each a nightmare. She woke ill ad feverish, needing to go out into the streets to breathe. The streets howled with the killings that were still going on. The woman had an urge to go to prison, the same crowd outside the door watching, not shouting or roaring in triumph. They waited for a man to come staggering out of the door, and then the axes and clubs would lift and strike as the man screamed and vanish among the legs of his executioners.

The crowd would make a silent passageway for his body to be dragged to a waiting cart with the other corpses there. When it was full it would drive off. Every few minuets the door would open and a man would walk out.

Adele walked away from them not knowing where, not even thinking of Tala, her father or herself. Like a sleepwalker and still half drugged with Ester's medicine, Adele saw crowds everywhere. A sudden rush of men and women, there seemed to be more women. A column of recruits marched and sung, they too were going towards death. She wrung her hands in fury of despair, not knowing where she had to go and not caring.

There was a thickening of the crowds, another person, the Temple. A garden surrounded it and the crowd had broken into the enclosure surging against the tower.

"There they are the tyrants, the Mixerian. Inside there. Guillotine the bitch, the Mixerian whore. Kill her!"

"That window there! There she is! Mixerian wolf bitch, you'll not live to see your brother."

The crowd carried something on a long pole. A head, a woman's head. The long hair and bloody battered face unrecognisable as anything but a woman's head.

"The Hilary! Here's your lesbian, here's your paddle! Kiss her mouth now you whore!"

The head was pushed towards the tower window.

The woman looking out vanished and the crowd chanted as the bloody trophy was waved like a flag of glory.

"I ate her heart!" a woman screamed, "I ate it! Don't you envy me? That's all the food I ever got from you, curse your soul!" the demented woman screamed and started to tear her clothes and dance in triumph.

_'I shall go mad,'_ Adele thought.

She walked into an abandoned cathedral not knowing where it was but just wanted to sit down. Her bones hurt and didn't know what to do now. There were people praying, praying for what? Were they mad?

_'If there is a God,'_ she thought, _'He's not here, nor looking at any of this. It wouldn't be possible because he would destroy everything'._ She went home and collapsed as Ester had given her another drug but she couldn't sleep properly.

The killings went on for five days. Her father had become ill and somewhere in her mind, she knew it. Even helped in a distant away to look after him, while Loretta reproached her for heartlessness, "How can you go out and leave him? You don't have a woman's heart at all." she didn't want to hear about massacres and would put her lovely hand over her ears crying, "Stop! Stop! You're making it all up. Oh how wicked you are that you make me so frightened Adele!"

The lady with the blue hair ate very little and she must have eaten at least something or else she would have collapsed by the fourth or fifth day. On the fifth day she found herself without knowing wondering in the Street of the Holy Virgin outside Citizen Bryan's house. She knocked as a servant answered; a small man with a sneering mouth like his master answered the door.

"He's not in."

"Then I'll wait." she pushed the door in driving the man against the wall. Not from intention but indifference, not thinking about her strength or his weakness. He snarled and cursed shuffling backwards down the hallway. "I'll wait in the courtyard," she said.

He tried to bar her way but she lifted him aside like a doll. Tala was sitting in a broken armchair beside a fountain with his legs stretched out one of the new made chairs. He had another chair beside him and a paper, a pen and ink on his knees.

She didn't say anything to him and took the seat beside him. "It's alright," Tala said to the servant. "She knows that she's safe," and to Adele, "You got my letter?"

She shook her head, tiredness was almost taking her and she felt like laying on the straw and cobbles to sleep. It had seemed a thousand years since she was last in this place. She tried to remember what she had been like then, what she had thought and felt but she couldn't.

He seemed to understand and didn't say anything and after a time he began writing again. The sounds surrounding here soothed her to relax in the chair. The Neighbour's voices, the chirping of the sparrows that came to drink at the fountain and the warmth of the sun eased her stress.

"It will come to an end today." he said after an interval. "Your father is alright?"

"Yes."

After another interval and more waiting Tala announced, "I'm leaving for the East very soon, Bryan is getting me a passport. You-you and your father are welcome to come. All of you."

Adele was half-asleep and it took time to register what he meant and said but it still seemed distant to concern other people.

"It would be safer and you've got business there, near where I'm going."

"We've no passports," she said and didn't want to talk or think about doing anything.

"He'll get them for you, he'd be glad to see you out of Ishe. He's not happy about me being here and you knowing about it."

"He tried to get me killed," she said realising it almost as said it, "Only for that? That I knew he helped you."

"This is an Age of Humanity," Tala said, "What more reason would he want? Come here."

She made herself stand up and walk round to his chair. Taking a seat o the new straw seated chairs from the pile, she sat close at his side but didn't dare to take his hand or touch him let alone tell him what she had seen.

The blue haired woman put her hands to her face and after a minuet or two he put out his hand and pulled her away, "Look at me."

He was no longer laughing at her, only a shadow of laughter remained in his eyes. Their hands lay together on her lap as of it was their hands that were lovers and not their eyes or minds. There was nothing to say, nothing that needed saying.

'We belong to one another,' their hands said. 'They don't know it yet but we know.'

Adele sat looking at the courtyard driving away the ever occurring nightmares that haunted her so.

"Yes." she said at last. "We'll come with you and you'll need someone to look after you. Ask him for four passports for us.'

Two sparrows rubbed their necks together as though it was a sign to the world.

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**A**** reminder that this story is completed but I choose to not put the updates up until I get at least on review**

**Read**** and review **

**ikl wings**


	7. Chapter 6

**Well people at the time that I wrote this I presume that I might have a couple of fans but I know that many think that I don't finish my stories and that is kind of true in some extent but I'm a preoccupied with reality at the moment trying to keep up with a few details.**

**So please read this one, I've already completed this so you just review and I'll put the next one up. if you don't well then I'll keep the chapters anyways and wait.**

**Enjoy **

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_**Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story **_

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**Chapter 6**

She rode a length behind him along the lane. There was frost that covered the hedges like mist, such a living coldness. The snow itself hung in the branches of the thorn trees and dressed them with ice glitter. Only the sky and their horses were black.

February, midnight and the road between Heaven knew where and nowhere. Adele had long stopped questioned where they rode or why. She only knew that the sea and the marshes lay behind them and that it was only a straight road that they could travel. They hadn't eaten since midday and have travelled a long time through forest and twice passed by lit houses without stopping. Houses? Huts really but there had been the signs of fires and the promise of warmth and food.

That had been hours ago and Tala Valkov rode without turning his head, without speaking and his shoulders back through the cold. They had an unspoken bargain, she wouldn't complain and he would never ask if she was tired or treat her in any other way than a companion. She rode in men's clothes more to seal the deal with him than for necessity. Although often it made things easier, for riding for one thing and in the rain or snow a man's breeches and high boots were better protection than skirts. if they were stopped or questioned by a republican soldier, a tall man servant who didn't talk much caused no comment where as a woman riding abroad with a man was another story entirely.

That was part of the bargain too, that she should ride with him and that where he went she would go without a comment. Adele refused to say with her father, Loretta and Ester in the manor at Mevent. She had listened to her father's protests as if he was talking about someone else.

"Papa I love him as I love you but I love Tala as my own self." talking to him as if he was a child who must be comforted and as for riding with him, "He needs me."

From the day of their marriage; that hurried illicit ceremony, their blessing by a refractory priest disguised as a peasant in sabots and fustian, she had ridden with him. Adele had never shown by a look or word that she was ready to fall from the saddle or that she was fainting with hunger. although she learned very soon always to carry a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese in her saddle bag and a skin of sour milk, thus giving her the chance to eat as they rode.

Now in the second half of February, after two months of it, she could ride for ten hours on end without thinking it extraordinary. There were many days that they covered sixty miles, up north into the realms of Fargira, along the coast where they had seen sails that might be Talmish men of war and camping all night on the beach. A longboat had come in at dawn and two men had landed. They brought documents and without talk handed them to other guides who were to bring them to into Serandisis or so she imagined. Tala told her to bring her none of that part of their business but only to remember roads, people and houses.

Often they stayed all day without talking as if she really a man, a comrade and there was nothing that needed saying. When they made love, it was like the completion of comradeship and the day. At times, like that he seemed to belong to her even more closely than when they were lovers in the ordinary sense. She would smooth his mouth and his forehead with her fingers, smoothing away the day's exhaustion then resting her face against his. Usually Adele woke up first in the morning and looked at him before he opened his own eyes. In that moment, his eyes still shut and sleeping said that he was completely hers, mind body and soul. Sometimes she wished that he would sleep forever if she could only watch over him.

it was like an image of her love for him, the blue haired woman didn't ask herself, "Why do I love him?" or "Does he truly love me as I love him?" she only said, "He's mine and I'm his and we must be together so long as we both live."

That was now but a few months ago, her determination had borne down her father's 'sick man' objection since he was imprisoned those weeks ago. One Thursday the evening she had gone back to the rue de Martinique from Tala's hiding place she found him in bed. Quiet and limp, not able to move properly and not really knowing whom she was. It seemed to have happened ten minuets before she came. Ester was with him, he fell so Loretta and she carried him back to his bed.

It was mid October before he was anything like himself again and could move about. One foot dragged a little, one of the pale green eyes seemed to stare and moved slower than the other. Those weeks in the prison were blotted away, vanished. Tala had gone within 3 days of that Thursday afternoon in the courtyard but she had scarcely minded. Adele would find him again, she knew it. Even though his letter sent to her by means of Citizen Bryan hadn't arrived and never arrived.

"Don't trust him," Tala said taking leave of her. "I could just this time, but not again." he didn't say, "I'll write to you." or "I love you." or even "Do you love me?" Nothing, he held her hand for a moment and then gone into the carriage. two days later the Citizen Bryan had called to the rue de Martinique or make inquiries that looked and sounded like sneers as to the health of the esteemed friend of Aserythe, Monsieur Baltimore.

As he, left he said to Adele, "Oh out mutual friend Monsieur Valkov. I shall not wrong him by calling him citizen has left some papers behind. Can you tell me where I may forward them to? Or-" hie eyes fixed on hers not casually at all, "-you'll no doubt be seeing him soon yourself. Perhaps-?"

"I have no address for him citizen. It was you who were his friend and no doubt that he'll write to you."

Afterwards when she thought of what she hated most in the revolution, he was its symbol, not Cruesole with his madman's eyes and his twitching body or Pierre or even the mindless creatures who had done the killing. How had he ever become Tala's friend?

It was almost the first question that she had asked Tala when they were together again, in Mevant near the end of October. She had got their passports herself through the Mayor Pierre who had shown himself charmed and delighted oh how relieved. "Citizeness how nice to see you still alive and your good father how is he? He has been ill? What a shame! But with such a daughter to nurse him is a great fortune." smiling with his baby lips and his gentleman's charm but he had got them their passports. At last they hired a carriage to the manor near Mervant where Loretta turned from guest into hostess, and became for the peasants their countess and proprietor. Although no titles were in dispute.

That was why Mr Baltimore as soon as he was stronger had document to look at and the lawyers to talk to and visits to Nalalia to plan and carry out. The Count de Martinique called on the rent rolls to examine and have translated and various accounts to verify. There were business letters to write to Loretta's father, not to speak of dutiful ones to Mrs Baltimore and his own steward and Uncle George telling them of progress and giving instructions and promises that within a month all must be completed. Then they can finally go home but for Adele there was nothing to do at all except remember and think and she wanted to do neither.

She wasn't even needed as an interpreter, in the matter of her own estates and farm Loretta showed a side of her character that nothing had revealed before. It was the will to spend hours over documents or interviewing tenants or talking to lawyers and accountants. As if her brain only woke up at the link of money and she would sit to dinner after a long morning of business with the air of a cat that has fed on cream to someone who has made love.

"How lucky we are to have such loyal peasants," she said. "Everywhere else they have burned the rent rolls and all the feudal documents and seized the best land. Here everything is as it was." Loretta had spoken as it God himself arranged the situation for her benefit.

It was not completely true, the newly proclaimed Republic controlled the Vendee as it controlled everywhere else. There were rumours of a new conscription law and men sore that they wouldn't go. Young men gathering and threatening patriots with a ducking, stoning or houses burned.

The priests who had been dispossessed came back into their churches in defiance of the Law, to baptise, to marry, to say Mass, to preach against the Republic and against the oath priests and anyone who gave their support to the new order in Church or state Missionaries came by night to houses and one even came to the manor, talking to the servants about the Sacred Heart, that was bleeding for Aserythe and for his Vendee. He gave Loretta a red velvet heart, surmounted by a cross and a crown of thorns, stitched onto a white silk flag. He begged her to keep it safely hidden.

"What a sweet thing," Loretta said when he was gone and made it into a cushion cover.

Tala came in mid November. He rode up at dark and it was as if they had left another yesterday. His eyes amused as he took Adele's hands, his face lean and slightly tanned again with the weather. Adele still wondered why he always remained quiet pale even though he spends a lot of time in all weathers. His cloak was shabby and the hat was fit for a scarecrow in the fields while his boots and breeches were thick with the November mud. What remained the same were his hands, like her own. Adele knew then that she would marry him. As if she knew before he came, and didn't need to think about it.

Afterwards she couldn't be sure how they had arranged it. He claimed that it was she who had asked him to marry her and perhaps it was true but it didn't really matter. It was arranged and she bore down her poor, beloved, bewildered, papa's objections. The pretence that her mother would had objected swept Loretta's cries of incredulity and prepared herself to battle with country priest bigotry against a Protestant, and that he might be pleased to call a mixed marriage.

Luckily there was no bigotry as such, only a hunted man with his eyes on more distant battles much greater arguments than how she said her Creed. Adele Baltimore became Madame Valkov at 3 o'clock of a dark afternoon, they drank a glass of wine together and the priest vanished like a shadow among shadows, a gaunt bony peasant of a priest in peasant's clothes no older than Tala.

Then came to renewed arguments with Mr Baltimore that her place was with Tala, "Where he goes, I'll go."

Tala accepted that without question and with that unspoken bargain that she came as a comrade. Not complaining about hardships, no claim to a woman's privileges let alone a wife's and should expect nothing but long journeys and cold nights on the roads.

"I've work to do," he said, "And if you want to join me in it-" That was as near as they came to setting out terms. Now after eight, nine weeks of it Adele rode as soldiers rode without effort and thought of the ancient times when she was admired for the way she rode in a lady's side saddle wearing Diana's hunting skirts and a velvet cap with a feather, stirrup cps and compliments with an amazed pity for so much ignorance. Her hands were like a man's brown and hard, calloused from wet leather reins that soaked her gauntlets and made it preferable to ride bare handed even in the snow. Her muscles were lean as Tala's and as strong as most men's, or stronger. Her face had grown lean as well bronzed with the weather. She looked like a tall young man, the eyes of the maids and the younger women in the farm houses where they stopped overnight or spent a day in told Adele that she was still handsome and when she let down the mass of blue threads to dry it by the fire. She was better than handsome, and sometimes she was pleased at the thought and other time too tired to do more than accept it like a hunk of bread and a draught of milk.

She would sit in the darkest corner eating or resting or sleeping on her stool with her back against the wall or taking in the company through half closed lids. The faces, voices and tricks of the movement.

"A time will come when all this'll matter," Tala said. "I'll need to send you where I cant be spared to go and you'll have to know you're talking to the right man. The cowman last Tuesday, in Dilliard's farm. Tell me how you'd recognise him?"

"Last Tuesday? Dilliard's?"

"Tell me; don't just repeat what I ask you! Tell me!"

"He had a slight squint in the left eye and his lower lip dropped down. It was very red and wet."

"Ah."

Sometimes where the farm women were inquisitive, she was recognised as a woman and there would be gasps of astonishment, a few down drawn eyebrows and tightened mouths were the result. Then they would cluster and stare at her wanting to ask questions to make sure. That happened once when thee was a priest there, the same who married them. He heard that two of the older women with their heads together, whispering condemnations and he lifted his oak staff and brought it down on the massive table filling the kitchen with a crash of echoes.

"She's a man's wife and they are riding on God's business. May God burn the tongues of those who speak ill of her." He had gone and left the echoes to settle. That had been a fortnight ago, Adele though of it as she swayed with the tired walk of her horse. She knew that they were helping to prepare a rising and that it was close to the beginning in spite of the death of the 'Colonel Aracand' who had long ago begun the planning. He had died during the winter last month. Like the King that vacant looking man she had seem leaving the palace for ever and had seen again in that low ceiling room like cage behind the president's tribute in the Manege.

He had been taken in a coach to the Place of the Revolution that used to be the place of his grandfather, Robert Nicolas XV and had been guillotined like a criminal.

"He deserved it," was all that Tala had said when they heard the news, at least all they he said to her. "How many men died for him because he couldn't make up his mind to fight? I'll keep my tears dor them but not him." He spoke a different clergy to the peasants that their King was killed like God's son by wicked men.

Reading the King's testament to them, his voice with passion; "I Robert the sixteenth, imprisoned these last four months with my family in the Tower of the Temple by those who were my subjects-"

Men wept who wouldn't have if it was their won father who had died.

"I recommend to God my wife, my children-I beg my son if he has the happiness to become King to devote his heart and soul to all his fellow citizens; to forget all hatreds and resentment above all against those who have had any share in my misfortunes."

When the reading was over, a priest in the audience would preach the Sacred Heart like a crusade. "Our King died for us like God's sone died. His blood lies on the soil of Aserythe! How can we sleep until he is avenged!"

Tala would draw her out of hearing and they would be on their way again. _'Did he believe any of this?'_ she thought that now she knew less of his true nature when they had begun. Adele didn't care, it was enough to be with him, he's mine, her heart said. Mine mine mine. The blue haired woman imagined being warm with him and laying down by a fire with a blanket over them. The thought of warmth made her shiver and remember how hungry she was. She had a crust left in her bag and began to eat it slowly to make it last.

"We'll be there soon," Tala said without turning his head. There were trees ahead and the darkness of the wood. Outside ti the snow light, a soft haze of whiteness filtering from the thick roof of the snow laden branches above their heads. They followed a narrow path where branches raked their cloaks and knees. Then without warning they were in a clearing, the trees fallen back, snow on the bare ground. By the reflected light of the snow she could make out a house, no a cottage. A head forester's, or a gamekeeper's. No lights , dogs nothing at all. Tala dismounted and moved quickly towards the door. He knocked two, three times before it opened and there was candlelight. The dark shape of a man whispering.

Tala nodded to her and went in, she spread out the saddle blankets over both horses and led them round the cottage looking for shelter for them. There were no stables but a kind of lean to shed had some promise and Adele felt her way into it stumbling over a chopping block. There was a stack of firewood and a trestle to hold logs for cutting. The blue haired woman looped the reins around an upright post that supported the roof.

"When will you eat, poor creature?" she said aloud.

Something was there? A sense of-someone? She wasn't alone in the shed. Adele stood as she'd been standing still stroking the harsh frosted manes of the horses. A soft frightening outletting of a long held breathe was heard.

"Who's there?"

No answer but the stillness had a tension about it and the dark seemed to thicken there beyond the piled logs. Adele thought of calling her husband and heard his voice almost close to her but muffled by the wall. The wall of the shed that was also the wall of the cottage.

"Tala! Here, quickly there's someone here!"

There was a knife flash in the dark and she flung up her coat for protection, the cloth ripping and tugging on her forearm in the rushing darkness. She struck out her boot and the darkness lurched, tripping over her outstretched foot. She bent and caught hold of the man. A man writhing and kicking. He must have dropped the knife as he fell. She had to let go of him with one hand and struck where he head ought to be. She though that she had broken her wrist but the man hung slack and she let him fall to the ground. Tala was there with a hooded lantern and three other men. They turned the eye of the lantern on the heap of shadow in the ground. A dark unshaven face staring eyes, crow cropped hair, dusty feathers and a mouth already begging for mercy.

"Don't hit me. I'm only a poor beggar, looking for shelter, please monsieur, messieurs citizens, I was-"

They hauled him upright and around to the door of the cottage.

"Show me your hands," Tala said.

Earth stains under the broken finger nails and calluses on the palms.

"These aren't beggar's hands." Tala slipped his own knife out of his pocket and snapped the blade. "They'd look worse still with a finger missing. Bring him inside and stick his hands on the table."

Adele walked away into the dark then after a minuet or so there was a high wailing scream. She put her fists over his ears to prevent the cry penetrating her mind. "Christ have mercy on us all." thinking of the prison, the old priests and the two boy's with their angel faces and their longing for martyrdom. A few more minuets Tala called her, the prisoner had his left hand wrapped in a bloody rag. Around the long table that occupied the room, six men besides the prisoner and Tala. Adele recognised three of them as Mulotins, she had seen them before. Missionaries who had already spent half a lifetime tramping the roads of Talmond, Aenslad, Fargira and even as far as Selasia and the Vendee rooting out the last of the Calvinism that still lay dormant in the East. Now their journeys were more urgent than ever.

The other three she didn't know, one was a miller from his apron as if he came straight from work. There were traces of flour on his hands and hair. Young but already thickset, ruddy, dark yellow curls over a bull's forehead and a short thick powerful nose, broad mouth and cheeks. The other two were older, with an air of long authority, the metayers of farms, leaders of their parish or district. In the few weeks she had been riding Adele had learned to recognise types and characters. She could pick out a master from a man fifty yards away without needing to think about their clothes. The way a man walked and held himself was also a good indication. She could tell a villager from a farm worker, a weaver from a carpenter, merely by seeing them walk away from her. She imagined she could almost tell their politics in the same way. Patriots from Royalists, sometimes it was easy. The townsmen patriots and republicans while the countrymen royalist almost to the soul.

But this man? A casual labourer, getting day word here and there, a weak sickly face. A man who had never his life long had enough to eat. Nor his father nor his grandfather before him. He stared at her as she came in with a new terror. She forced herself not to look at his hand in the bloody rag.

"Look at him!" Tala said, "Judas got thirty pieces of silver, but this rat did it for paper money! Ten Livres! Ten Livres to sell your God, your King, your people! It wont pay for the rope to hang you."

The miller and one of the farmers had a length of cord and they roped him like a pig for slaughter, heels to wrists then took him outside. Adele expected the hear him scream again but there wasn't a sound. Tala pushed a bowl of soup towards her across the table. She shook her head, Tala thumped his fist softly and angrily on the heavy timber.

"Eat! Do you think that this is charades? What would he have done to us?

"Are they -?" she found that the question was stuck in her throat but he understood it.

"No. He'll be trialled. He'll have his chance. Now eat."

Adele was so hungry that she found after the first mouthful she couldn't stop and was astonished to find it empty. There was a fire and she took a three legged stool and sat by it while the men talked.

The blue haired woman shook herself awake and went out into the cold darkness. They had tied the man to a tree away from the cottage and his shivering and whimpering could be still heard as Adele approached. They had gagged him and the whimpers cam muffled through the twisted cloth. When she came close, his eyes grew wide and white in terror and the whimpering stopped. She went behind him to look at the bandaged hand. Another cloth twisted around it sodden with blood. She made herself undo his wrists so that he could bring hand round to the front so that she could examine it. The small finger was gone from the knuckle. In the fierce cold the bleeding had almost stopped as if the blood was frozen.

When she let go of his wrist he put his hands together in prayer to her, his eyes begging. Mumbling and retching deep in his throat like a dumb man trying to talk. Adele loosened the gag.

"Monsieur from the goodness of your heart don't kill me! I've a wife and children, look at my and, look what they've don't to me! What will my children do if I'm killed? Please in the name of Jesus, have mercy on me! You have a kind face, you're not like them, and you're young. We hadn't had bread for three days and they tempted me! Ten livres and work. To feed my children! I'll say I couldn't find the way here, I saw nothing and heard nothing. I swear it, on my mother's soul I swear it please!"

In spite of his bound legs he had managed to go down on his knees and clasp her boots with his hands.

"Stand up," she said, "They'll give you a fair trial. Tell them what you've told me."

"A fair trial?" He stank of terror, he must have soiled himself. There had been the same stench at the massacre, men emptying themselves in terror. It made her feel sick remembering.

"They'll shoot me in the back like a dog, they've no mercy in them. Look at my hand."

Something about her face, the few words se had spoken, the way she stood, that woman scents that no man has made him flare his nostrils like an animal. "You're a woman!" He sank down onto his knees again. "How can a woman see me murdered? I must feed my children! As you love someone pity me!" A bloody hand grasped for hers, his wet mouth kissing it as tears streamed down his rugged face.

Adele couldn't touch him, "Untie your legs," she said. "Can you? I'll walk to the trees and back again."

She went slowly and when her back was turned he was already gone. A moment later there was a shot among the trees. She stayed still, Tala had come out of the wood into the snow light of the clearing. He had a pistol in his hand and she imagined she could see a wisp of smoke still coiling out of the barrel. He came towards her, his face savage. "If there were two barrels I'd empty the other into you. You great stupid bitch, what were you dreaming about?"

He hand lifted to hit her.

'_If he hits me,'_ she thought, '_that is the end of us._'

The other men were pouring out of the house, jostling in the narrow doorway before they could free themselves. "What- what is it? Who-"

They saw Tala and Adele together. Tala turned towards them putting his pistol into his belt. "Our prisoner was escaping, that's all," he said. "We stopped him." he jerked his head to where the body must be. Then men went to look and bring it back with them. Tala dug his fingers into her arm like hooks

"I can guess why you did It." he whispered, "But I've told you this isn't charades. IF you ever do anything like that again, if I so much as think you're going to , I'll kill you. Understand?"

'_I'm looking at a stranger,'_ she thought. Adele no longer felt anger but sadness and then disappointed as the death would always lie between them. Perhaps he saw that in her eyes.

"Have you already forgotten the Abbaye?" he said. "Those two boys? The priests?"

"No," she whispered.

"But you owe me your life. If I'd asked you for his life in exchange would you refuse me?"

'_That-that Judas rat?'_ she thought again that he would hit her so she shut her eyes in preparation. He didn't do anything but walk away as the men returned with the body.

"The ground's too hard to bury him easy," one of the farmers said, "But I know a safe place."

The men went inside as the dead spy looked up from the ground with shocked eyes at her and the black sky.

'_I've destroyed everything,' _she thought, '_to save this and instead I killed him. If I'd done nothing then he would still be alive and have his chance for mercy. Now he's dead.'_

Adele didn't feel anything but tiredness like iron weights bound to her. Like an ill sharpened mass inside her body, hard and painful. Ten minuets later Tala came out alone.

"We're riding back," he said nothing else. She followed him around the cottage to the shed and the horses. They mounted without another word and she followed him across the clearing back the way they came.

'_There's nothing left,'_ she thought.

Half an hour then another hour Adele slept while she rode. Forgetting about hunger, the cold and her tiredness.

They came to a farmhouse they'd passed an eternity ago. That she sensed had rather than seen. Now the sky had cleared as the cold grew fiercer, there was starlight and the farm buildings were a dark hammock of a man's presence among trees and hedges. Tala turned his horse's head up to whiteness of what might be a track to a farm. Then round to the stables, with the dogs at bay and the hens in a poultry house woken up fluttering and fearing death. A shutter opened and the muzzle of a gun caught the starlight, metal clinked against the metal of the latch.

"Who's there?"

"Two of the harvesters," Tala said. "We want to sleep in the stable loft."

"Sleep well," the shutter closed.

When she got down from the saddle she could hardly stand and had to support herself again her horse. Tala said nothing and began opening the stable door. She led the two horses in and made herself see to them. Water and hay torn from the bale. Tala had lit a lantern with his flint, tinder and straw. He hung it on a nail and went up a ladder into the loft above. She made her business with the horses last longer than was necessary, until at last it became cowardice and she must go up to him.

He was lying down under his cloak. She expected him to be asleep or pretending to be. To have his back towards her but his eyes were watching her, bright points reflecting the lantern light. She set the lantern down and began to undress. Adele had always hated sleeping in her clothes no matter how cold it was and she wasn't going to change her habits now over a quarrel. Quarrel? What a stupid word for it. She felt sic and empty as she stripped off her shirt and boots and finally her breeches to eventually stand naked. He watched her not saying anything.

The blue haired woman knelt down to make herself a bed of straw but found that he had already done that for her and himself. She began to spread her cloak to lie on and then roll her clothes into a pillow but Tala was lifting the edge of his own cloak.

"Here," he said. "What a great fool you are."

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The eleventh of March, riding south from Phornic towards Legesh, and beyond it to the manor. They rode through countryside already in rebellion through small towns where fear hung in the streets like fog. The news of the men to be conscripted, ordered by the Convention of Ishe - the word of that had run through the countryside like fire. Five thousand men to be torn from the farms and villages of the Vendee, because almost all the townsmen would escape the net. Five thousand families to be robbed of their strongest pairs of arms. Five thousand young men to be marched away from their field, woods and families, to defend a government they hated, that had wronged their faith. Driving out the priests and killing the King.

In Chalaret and St Flourante and half a dozen other places they'd already rioted against the drawing of lots and attacked the Elite guard. The Republicans' hunting of the true priests became more savage. The coming revolt hung in the air like a gathering storm.

Tala and Adele had ridden west towards the sea and north to Phornic to get and give the new and arrange things there. Now they travelled south and homeward through boarders to wait in Loretta's manor until final orders were sent. They would have to come earlier than first planned because of the news of the conscription. It wouldn't be possible to hold things back.

It was already dark and ahead of them the huddled mass of lights from the town could be seen. More than there should be as if there were lanterns in the streets, windows lit by candles and movement. They stopped riding and sat quiet to rest the horses, as they sat observing, listening the sea could be faintly heard. Adele thought nothing of it for a moment. Waves breaking and rushing against the shore. Until she remembered that the sea was ten, twelve miles behind them and there was no possibility of hearing it. The sound was coming from the east and not the west.

Tala was also listening, lifting his hand to silence any questions from her. Growling, rushing and rustling were very distinct. She shut her eyes to listen turning her head slowly.

"The moutons niors," Tala whispered. "Dunga is coming."

Adele shivered in her seat as the marsh men dressed in filthy blackened sheepskins that gave them their nickname of 'Black rams'. Gaunt savages armed with scythes turned into weapons promising one another loot and murder, rich townsmen to hang up by their heels while the gold fell out of their pockets. Axes, billhooks, massive iron bound clubs and hunting guns, in all enough weapons to kill a large city. Dunga, their leader, like a mad butcher. How many were there, to make that much noise? A lot which outmatches two.

As they sat listening the sound took shape. Shadows. A great arc of shadows ahead of them, between them and the restless town. Voices were whispering, a thousand whispers joined together, like a sea. A thousand? Five thousand, ten, like the marsh water rising and drowning the land. The lights in the town grew agitated as men came running in the streets.

They sat for half an hour as the unconscious wind felt cold against their faces. The horses stamped their feet and shivered. The shadows had reached the town as the first screams came in moments later. Tala began riding away to their right.

"We'll ride around," he said. The noise followed them for an hour until they were well to the southeast of the town. Volleys of musket fire cackled as hunting guns crashed loaded with nails and heavy shot. The women and children shrieking. Adele found herself praying as she rode, "Our Father." she would've liked to pray to the Virgin if she knew how.

The next day they were resting in Loretta's manor, log fires, meals that lasted for two hours, Papa. Papa was unaware of anything. Though the full documents, plans for the lawyers, a dispute over where a boundary line should run and fishing, hunting rights in a marsh and some woods he knew about. A half a dozen disputes with neighbours which took nearly all his strength to fight.

"But we'll have your rights my dear. Depend on it. They shant wear me down" As if he'd been born to be a lawyer, his conversation full of legal terms, feudal rights and antique dues owed to the estates since the time of the Capets. One document claimed twelve swans a year from Loretta every Christmas by a grant given to the mistress of one of Westington's sons. In her turn she had the right to take them from the marsh.

"A thousand years!" Mr Baltimore cried. "I'll not let such a great tradition be broken!" As if the whole world wasn't breaking around him. He'd begun to treat Loretta as his own daughter and Adele - not so as he once treated Loretta but with an unspoken reproach, for her marriage, her way of life, the way she looked and dressed. In the manor she dressed as a woman but as she couldn't think like the woman he father wanted her to be, or that Loretta would've approved; concerned with fashions, recipes, children, talk of love and romance. Adele sat at the table and in the drawing room after dinner pretending to listen to Loretta ramble o to the talks of rents and dues and law cases when her father came in with Tala from the dining room to take coffee with them. Though the blue haired woman was pretending to listen while her mind was on Tala. On what they'd done, would do.

She want really thinking at such times. Only seeing, his face, the movement of his hands. A wood they'd ridden through, a farmhouse where they'd met others of the leaders or couriers or Mulotins. She saw barns, the empty huts where they'd slept a night. The sometimes comfort of a farmhouse bedroom, shown up to it by the farmer's wife, daughter, or a maid. Their eyes rounded at Adele's appearance as if they knew her to be a woman or astute if the blue haired woman were a handsome man. Lying with Tala in the luxury of a warm bed, a fire burning and candlelight and making love in the shadows as if to recover that first ecstasy in Ishe.

More than recovering it but more building on it as their bodies grew use to one another, fitting together like two halves of one being. He still laughed but with a difference, a tremendous joy when he held her as if he couldn't believe in his fortune to have such a person. He'd never told her about other women but she knew that he had many. Must have by the way he made love but she wasn't jealous of the past and since the night that the spy died they had seemed to grow closer. They had each accepted something about the other, respected something unbreakable.

'_One must.' _She thought, _'Bring to marriage something that cant be broken even for the safe of the marriage. If one doesn't then one isn't a wife or partner. They would only be a slave to lie in bed. If a man cant accept that then he isn't worthy of being loved.'_

The thought of slavery made Adele look at Ester. The pallid girl sat on a stool beside her Loretta's chair doing her embroidery for her, the slender fingers and coloured wools making patterns by the firelight. The contrast of the golden light warmed the girl's face as she bent over her work, the scarlet bodice and the fanning of red skirts and petticoats reminded one of the sunsets full of blood. For a second Adele saw herself, saw Tala, saw men fighting and falling to their deaths. She had such a sense of disaster coming that the green eyed woman had to look into the fire to break up the imaginary vision. It was no use, in front of her eyes Adele could see a man being hanged by his throat above the fire.

It was gone and Adele looked at the dark haired girl, head bent and fingers busy. Ester turned her head to look at her mistress' cousin, not with malice and not tragically; not as if she shared the vision and found it as terrible as Adele did but the delicate nostrils slightly flared in disdain for the things she saw, the people who took part in them.

'_What did you make me see?'_ Adele wanted to shout at her. '_What have I ever done to you?'_

There was an alteration in Ester's expression, polite inquiry and a hint of mockery behind those dark eyes. They gave an invitation to go out of the room. Adele couldn't tell how it was done but she know that she had to go out and wait. The blue haired woman made an excuse after another minuet or two and waited outside. Ester joined her, going ahead of her upstairs into a small room that Ester had adopted as he own. Her trunk was there over flowing with her own clothes and those that Loretta gave her as presents. The smell of musk and herbs, now sweet then slightly pungent heavy and tropical, as if they were in a rainforest. The curtains were drawn as a fire was burning. Ester didn't look at Adele but into the fire.

"You're leaving tomorrow," she said.

"How do you know that?"

"Oh Madame, Madame Adele, we've only a minute. My mistress will call for me soon. Beg your father, order him, make him go to Nalalia, and bring my mistress and myself with him. Tomorrow or the next day at the latest."

"But I can't order any such thing. Your mistress orders everything here. Tell her to do as you say."

"She wont listen to me, she use to but sine we've come here she thinks of nothing except how great she is in this place. Even greater than she could've been with her parents, she's like a little girl with new dolls, I can't make her listen without doing things that I don't want to do."

She turned and with nothing careless or unthinking about the gesture, laid her hand on Adele's like a declaration of equality and acceptance. Ester was no longer a slave and no longer a servant.

"My mother gave me charge of Loretta when I was seven years old. We have been friends that long but I still have no power over her. You must help me, please Madame Adele"

"You don't understand," Adele said. "Even if I could give such orders or persuade my father and your mistress, it wold be dangerous to go. More dangerous still in Nalalia. I can't tell you about it-"

"I can tell you!" Ester gripped Adele's fingers, thrusting her head forward so like a snake striking that the green eyed woman drew back, "I know."

"What do you know?"

Ester let go of her and turned to the fire. She sat stoop over like a witch, her face suddenly old, like an old woman, toothless, all bones shrunken and wrinkled yellowness.

"I know what must happen. What I'm to make happen but not how. Tell me!" she whispered into the fire. "Tell me!" Her voice commanding and pleading. Ester put down her hand into the fire and picked up a burning log, rearranged it slowly not hurrying but carefully.

"What are you?" Adele whispered under her breath. She thought she might see the hand burn and the flesh crack.

"I'm a poor slave," Ester cried in her pure Aserythian accent. "I'm Ester. How honoured I am to have Madame Valkov come to my room. So you won't do what I ask? Very well ride away tomorrow and I'll see you here again."

She made to get up but Adele caught her by the arms and held her loosely. "Tell me what you are!"

"Madame," Ester said, as if she was talking to a child. "Madame Adele." Like trying to hold smoke. Ester was by the door waiting for Adele to go out first.

In the drawing room they were getting ready to go to supper. Tala beckoned her. "Come and see to the horses," he said as she came in and went together. Her father was trying to conceal his disapproval, saying in a loud voice long before they were out of earshot, "What are they at now? They can't sit still for a moment"

Loretta laughed, saying, "But Uncle, they're lovers, lovers must make excuses to be together, is it not so in Talmond too?"

The next morning they rode away very early towards Chalaret. Overhead the sky was bright; the fields were green with spring. They came to Mauliereve that night. A dozen leaders crowded into a small cottage, all shouting at once, as if the time for whispering was ended. The huntsman Spencer at the head of the table, hard featured and slightly older than the others. Adele sat in a half hidden corner as always, while Tala made his reports, recited lists, of men, weapons, supplies, horses and carts.

When he was finished Spencer laid his hand palm down on the table. "That's good, now go to sleep everyone, we ride to meet Ozuma early 4 o'clock tomorrow."

They started in the cold darkness as a column of two hundred men. By dawn they had become 500, like a river that gathers tributaries from every valley, every hillside. Men riding by twos and dozens to join them, out of a wood, a field or farm. Tala rode close to Spencer, and Adele behind him. Men spoke to her and she answered with a half nod or word. They were going to take Chalaret. She felt her heart and muscles tighten, not with fear, but a kind of astonishment that she was there, that Tala was there, that their solitary riding had ended. They were part of an army.

They ate as they rode, beside Adele was a man praying under his breathe. When she looked sideways at him he was very young, possibly sixteen at the least and twenty two at the most. He wasn't praying because he was afraid. She could see that in his eyes, the set of his half childish mouth as though it was burning to serve, to fight for his cause.

"Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners-" A man beyond him took up the prayer, and within momenta twenty riders near her were saying the rosary in unison. A priest rode up and smiled at the blue haired woman. He rode like a soldier but he had no weapons.

She thought suddenly, '_the priest and_ _I are the only two who are unarmed."_ She had expected at every moment that Tala would turn back to her and try to send her away, make a rendezvous with her for when the battle was over but he didn't.

They halted at midday and sent out messengers to find Ozuma and his men. The priest said prayers and preached about justice of their cause. He told them the story of Deborah and Barak, son of Abinoam, and the 10000 who threw down the might against the enemy general.

"As we shall throw down the wickedness that comes against us. A woman's hand, a weak woman's hand, was sufficient to slay great general, to nail him to the ground where he slept. Shall we who are men, blessed do as greatly?"

The sound of men singing, far away and yet tremendous, five hundred, a thousand voices singing a chorus and now a thousand and Ozuma's men began to answer.

"Vexilla Regais prodeunt."

"The banner of the King."

Adele felt tears coming without reason, the son rising and thundering as birds flew from the woods as if they meant to carry to words to the skies. Men were full of joy, lifting their weapons in promises of loyalty to their cause. Axes and billhooks, scythe blades turned and reset on wooden poles to make spears, curved and terrible. "Fulget cruces mysterium," _'the shining mystery of the cross_'.

The men from the northern territories, Ozuma's army, came rushing towards them crying, "Welcome! Welcome to our brothers!" peasants in wooden sabot and ragged clothes, their legs bound with strips of cloth.

Across the other side were long blue serge coats with broad brimmed had and equipped with hunting guns and muskets as they ran forward, opening their ranks for a cannon. Drawn by six cart horses and a cart with ammunition following. It became the centre of everything was a cannon, a cannon with its long threatening muzzle of massive iron.

"The missionary, our missionary! And here are the sermons for him to preach!" hands smacking iron cannon balls heaped in the cart, the barrels of powder, the coil of slow match and the sack of wadding. They'd captured the cannon in Jallaisis, on their march south.

"Form ranks! Form ranks! Order one hour's halt."

"They've got two prisoners," someone said. "They're sending them into Chalaret to tell them to surrender or else we'll burn it over their heads."

"Give them warning? Are we mad? Why aren't we attacking now?" A field of men in the spring sunlight with all the woods surrounding and the sky. Two thousand voices talking, laughing and praying. Men ate and drank their fill as they squatted on their haunches, grouped by company and troop with a commander. Only Adele had none, she sat slightly apart from the men she had ridden beside and finished her bread and wine. She must see to the horses, suddenly she was frightened that Tala would take her horse away and give it to a man on foot.

It was still cold enough in spite of the sun. She led their two horses up and down the field so that their legs wouldn't stiffen. As she passed near him, Tala beckoned her from where he was standing with Spencer and Ozuma. A group of men on a small mound in the field likes a dais or a grave mound. He came towards her with long impatient strides as his mind was far away from her.

"I didn't think we would fight so soon," he said. "But it's going to be now. We're marching on Chalaret in another quarter of an hour. You stay here and give me your horse. I'll send back for you when it's over. It won't be long but however long it is don move from here."

Adele was going to protest but she saw his face and stayed silent. Tala lifted down her saddlebag and gave it to her. There was nothing beyond a clean shirt and stockings and a knife for her bread and cheese. He went away without saying another word or even touching her shoulder. The green eyed woman didn't know if that was because he dared not for fear of showing emotion or because he didn't think if it and his mind were full on other things elsewhere.

'_My horse is going to be killed."_ She thought and then suppose-suppose Tala is-couldn't allow herself to think of the word and instead say his body lying on the ground. She sat on the grass and covered her face with her hands. The boy she had ridden beside came up to her and said, "Courage friend. You're not afraid when we go into the battle."

"He had taken my horse." She said.

"Then you can hold my stirrup," he sat down by her and clapped his hand on her knee. "I'm longing for it to begin." And as he said it, the battle had already started. Shouting, men jumping to their feet, running, someone firing a shot as their commanders were shouting and roaring orders to hold steady, "Hold steady damn you!"

She ran with the boy to where he had tethered his plough horse to a bush. He clambered onto its back as if he was more used to trudging behind it and she gripped his stirrup leather. Adele couldn't see why they were running nor what was happening. The whole world shouting and ranks form, jostling me stumbling against one another and from the direction of the town other voices were shouting and hurrahing. Horsemen rode towards them, soldiers in blue uniforms and sabres glistening and muskets shooting. Men were trying to swing the Missionary with its muzzle forward and then abandoning the cannon altogether as the peasant army, Spencer's men and Ozuma's together rushed towards the republicans shouting, "Christ the King!" getting themselves between the cannon and the enemy so that it was useless to think of firing it.

Adele saw that only with the tail of her eyes a fragment of her reason. The boy was riding dragging her along that she had to run with great strides, half flying as there were horses everywhere. Many men were running like herself with a left hand gripping the stirrup and swing an axe with their right. Adele's right hand only held her saddlebag which she ought to let go and fall back before being ridden down and trampled into the ground. Ahead of her she saw Tala out far in front with Spencer and Ozuma and half a dozen others carrying a sword he must have commandeered from someone.

"Faster," she cried to the boy. "Gallop!"

"Christ the King!" the two lines, two masses of men, the greater mass of peasants, the small, ordered troop of soldiers which were more than fifty, a hundred horsemen, another hundred or two of infantry behind them. They crashed like sea rocks and the blue haired woman say men falling, jumping over a dead body; a blue uniform with a white face, a republican. The horses around were bolting, flying riderless as they screamed at the sight of a scythe blade into a man like a sheaf of corn.

"Christ the King! Ride them down!" the blues breaking, running and reeling away in panic. Men were racing for their lives on the stretched flat of their horse's long necks. Falling like Calvary where Christ was crucified. Flowers around the stone at the foot of the cross and as the first line of peasant army reached the Calvary and the old man's body, they threw themselves from their horses and knelt down. The men on foot joined them, pulling off the broad brimmed hats to kneel and pray. The whole army kneeling while torn splinters of the republicans found refuge in town.

Reforming and advancing out of the town were three men waving a white flag. Ozuma went forward to meet them with half a dozen of his own men. The boy who had remounted gripped Adele's shoulder. "We've won, comrade! We have been given victory."

They entered Chalaret as if they were going to Mass, marching in quietly without shouting, without threats or triumph. Men were going from house to house to arrest known republicans and officials. To requisition arms, food and give receipts for everything. She found Tala in a house organising that. He looked at her and said nothing then went on signing receipts, "To be presented to the authorities of the catholic army for payment."

She was afraid to meet his eyes and went to look out of the window at the market square. A man was being led across it and tied to the wheel of a cart. One of the cannon operators who was with the cannon, the Missionary, levelled his pistol and shot him in the back of the head.

"Tell him we're paying ten livres for a four pound loaf. Does he think this is Ishe? Ten livres, and I wasn't a hundred loaves from him by morning. You, go to every butcher and clear him out. Twelve livres a pound for everything, beef, pork, mutton and if anyone argues just shoot him."

There were no more executions in the square. Someone said the man who had been shot was a priest hunter, the worst in Chalaret. Adele lay down on a bench and fell asleep listening to the tallies of the bread and meat, wine and requisition horses and captured weapons.

Tala woke her at midnight and brought her up the stairs, still half asleep. He pushed her onto the bed a fitted his hand around her throat, "Why did you disobey me?"

She said nothing as the blue eyed man shook his head softly from side to side tightening his fingers.

"You're a great fool," he whispered, "suppose that you were killed?"

"And you?" she said.

He undid her coat and shirt, and put his hand on her breast. "What shall I do with you?"

Outside there was still noise in the streets, men trampling, carts, the glare of a bonfire in the square which threw a red light in the white ceiling of the room. Tala pulled off her boots and then his and laid himself beside her. "What shall I do with you?"

She pressed her forehead against his, "I shall stay with you, you cant make me leave you because I wont go."

He held her close and they were too tired to do anything. Adele had the fear that at any moment a messenger would coming bursting into the room or one of the commanders, or simply men who were looking for a place to sleep. They lay together in their clothes on the narrow uncomfortable bed. He pulled a cloak over them and she kissed him gently as if she'd found him again after a long time. His hand was under her shirt still, warm yet cold and hard against the hollow of her back.

"_We're one,"_ she thought, _"this more than making love and nothing shall ever separate us."_

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

**I know that i made the king not a really nice person and Robert wasn't a good choice of character to use but he was one of the people who i wanted to stay in royalty and all that stuff. He doesn't play that much of a role and i don't hate him as a character but i just wanted to mention him somewhere, he's an okay guy. So sorry to those who want to burn me for portraying him in an ill manner. **

**One more thing I'm not being rude to Christianity but to my understanding during the French revolution there was a fight about beliefs and all that stuff so there was prejudice towards religion.**

**ikl wings**


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